by Rick Cook
Moira twisted to face Wiz. “Of course I mean magic. What did you think? A bolt of lightning just happened to strike him while he was Summoning you?”
“You’re telling me there really is magic?”
Moira looked annoyed. “How do you think you got here?”
“Oh,” said Wiz. “Yeah. Well look, this magic. Can it get me home?”
“Patrius might have been able to do that, but I cannot,” she said angrily. She got to her feet. “Now come along. If you have breath enough to talk you have breath enough to walk.”
By paths and game trails they pushed on through the forest. Twice more they stopped to rest when Wiz would no further. Both times Moira fidgeted so impatiently that Wiz cut the stop short, barely getting his breath back. There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask, but Moira sternly forbade him to talk while they walked.
Once she stopped so suddenly that Wiz nearly trod on her skirt. She stared intently at a patch of woods before them. Besides a ring of bright orange mushrooms beside the trail, Wiz saw nothing unusual.
“This way,” she whispered, grasping his arm and tugging him off the path. Carefully and on tiptoe, she led him well around that bit of forest, striking the trail again on the other side.
“What was the detour about?” Wiz asked at their next rest stop when he had breath enough to talk.
“The little folk danced there on last night to honor the Mid-Summer’s Day. It is unchancy to go near such a place in the best of times and it would be very foolish to do so today.”
“Oh come on! You mean you believe in fairies too?”
“I believe in what I see, Sparrow. I have seen those of Faerie.”
“But dammit—”
Moira cut him off with an imperious gesture. “Do NOT curse, Sparrow. We do not need what that might attract.”
That made sense, Wiz admitted. If magic really worked and there was the burned husk of a man lying under the sod back behind them to suggest that it did then curses might work too. Come to that, if magic worked there was nothing so odd about fairies dancing in the moonlight. He shook his head.
“Why do you call me Sparrow?” he asked, feeling for safer ground.
“Because Bal-Simba called you so. You needed a name to use before the World.”
“I’ve got a name,” Wiz protested.
“Bal-Simba told you never to speak your true name to anyone,” Moira told him. “So we needed something to call you.”
“My friends just call me Wiz.”
“I will call you Sparrow,” Moira said firmly. “Now come along.”
Again she set off in an effortless stride. Wiz came huffing along behind, glumly admiring the swing of her hips and the easy sway of her body. He was used to being treated with contempt by beautiful women, but he had never been this taken with a woman and that made it hurt worse than usual.
One thing you have to say about my luck, he thought. It’s consistent.
Finally they topped a small rise and Wiz could see a road through the trees ahead. Off to the left he could hear the sound of running water. Moira crouched behind a bush and pulled Wiz roughly down beside her.
“This is the Forest Highway,” Moira whispered. “It leads over the Blackstone Brook and on into the Wild Wood.”
“Where we’re going?” said Wiz, enjoying Moira’s closeness and the smell of her hair. Instinctively he moved closer, but the hedge witch drew away.
“Yes, but not by the road. I am to meet someone here. You wait in the woods. Do not make a sound and do not show yourself.” She pulled back and continued down the trail, leaving Wiz with the memory of her closeness.
In spite of its grandiose title, the Forest Highway was a weed-grown lane with the trees pressing in on either side. The Blackstone Brook was perhaps ten yards wide and ran swift, deep and dark as its name under a rough log bridge.
As Moira predicted, there was a man waiting under the trees by the roadside. He was tall, lean, long-faced and as brown as the rough homespun of his tunic and breeches. When Moira stepped out of the trees he touched his forehead respectfully.
“I brought the things, Lady.”
“Thank you, Alber,” Moira replied kindly.
“Lady, is it true you are leaving us?”
“For a time, Alber. A short time, I hope.”
“We will miss you,” he said sadly.
Moira smiled and embraced him. Watching from behind his bush Wiz felt a pang of jealousy. “Oh, and I will miss you all as well. You have been like a family to me, the whole village.” Then she smiled again. “But another will be along soon to take my place.”
“It will not be the same, Lady,” he said dejectedly. He turned and gestured to the small pile of objects under a bush by the roadside. “The messenger said two packs. And two cloaks.”
“Correct, Alber.” Moira did not volunteer and he did not ask.
Quickly she began to sort through the items, checking them and re-stowing them into the packs.
“Shall I wait, Lady?”
“No.” She smiled up at him. “Thank you again.” The hedge witch made a sign with her right hand, first two fingers extended. “Go with my blessing. May your way home be short and safe and the journey uneventful.”
“May you be safe as well, Lady.” With that Alber turned and started down the road.
As soon as he had disappeared around a bend, Moira motioned Wiz out of hiding.
“A brave man,” Moira said as she tied the drawstring on one of the packs and set it aside.
“Why?” asked Wiz, nettled. “For bringing us this stuff?”
“Don’t sneer, Sparrow,” she said sharply. “This ‘stuff’ will sustain us on our journey. Alber was willing to chance Mid-Summer’s Day to see that we will eat and be warm in the Wild Wood.”
“Nice of him. But brave?”
Moira finished loading the second pack and shook her head. “Sparrow, how did you survive so long?”
“I survived just fine up until this morning,” Wiz retorted. “So what about Mid-Summer’s Day?”
Moira sighed in exasperation. “Mid-Summer’s Day is the longest day of the year. All magics associated with the sun and fire are at their most potent this day and magics of green and growing things are unusually potent as well. It is a day of power, Sparrow, and not a day for mortals to be about.”
“We’re out.”
“Not by choice, Sparrow,” Moira said grimly. “Now come.” She slung a large leather pouch over her shoulder and shrugged one of the packs onto her back. Then she stood and watched as Wiz struggled into the other one. As soon as he was loaded, they started off across the bridge.
Well behind them, Alber stuck to the relative safety of the road. Thus he was easily seen by a soaring raven gyring and wheeling over the green and leafy land.
Alber saw the raven as it glided low over the road. He made a warding sign, for ravens are notoriously birds of ill omen, and hurried on his way.
Above him the raven cocked his glossy black head and considered. Like most of his kind he knew enough to count one and two and one person travelling alone was not what his master searched for. There were two, and the bird’s keen eyes could see no sign of anyone else on the road.
But this was the only human he had seen today and this one was well away from the normal haunts of man.
The raven was not intelligent, but he had been well-schooled. With a hoarse caw he abandoned the search to his fellows and broke away to the south to report.
###
The forest deepened after Wiz and Moira passed over the river. They left the road around the first bend past the bridge and toiled up a winding game trail that ran to the top of a steep ridge. By the time they reached the top even Moira was breathing heavily. She motioned Wiz to rest and the pair sank down thankfully under the trees.
Through a gap Wiz could look ahead. The valley was a mass of green treetops. Beyond the valley lay another green ridge and beyond that another ridge and then another fading off into th
e blue distance. There was no sign of habitation or any hint of animal life. Only endless, limitless forest.
This was no second-growth woodland or a carefully managed preserve. The oaks and beeches around them had never been logged. The big ones had stood for centuries, accumulating mosses and lichen on their hoary trunks, growing close and thrusting high to form a thick canopy overhead. Here and there was an open patch where one of those forest giants had succumbed to age, rot or lightning and the successors crowding in had not yet filled the place. There were snags and fallen limbs everywhere, green with moss and spotted with bright clumps of fungus.
This is the forest primeval, Wiz thought and shivered slightly. He had never thought that trees could make him nervous, but these huge moss-grown boles pressed in on him from all sides, their leaves shutting off the sun and casting everything into a greenish gloom. The breeze soughing through the treetops sounded as if the forest was muttering to itself or passing the news of invading strangers, like jungle drums.
“I see why they call it the Wild Wood,” he said.
“This is not the Wild Wood,” Moira told him. “We are still only on the Fringe of the Wild Wood.”
“Does anyone live here?”
“None we would care to meet. Oh, a few cottagers and a small stead or two. But most who live on this side of the Blackstone have reason to shun their fellows. Or be shunned by them. We will best avoid company of any kind until we reach our destination.”
“Where are we going anyway?” Wiz sidled closer to her.
“To a place of refuge. You need not know more. Now come. We have far to go.”
It was late afternoon when they came over the second ridge and descended into another valley. Although the forest was as dense as ever, there was a water meadow through the center of this valley. The broad expanse of grass was a welcome sight to Wiz, oppressed as he was by the constant trees. Here and there trees hardly more than shrubs luxuriated in the warmth and openness. Also interspersed were small ponds and marshy patches marked by cattails, reeds and sweet blue iris.
They halted at the edge of the open and Moira surveyed the cloud-flecked sky uneasily.
“Nothing,” she sighed. “Now listen, Sparrow. We cannot go around because there are bogs above and below. We must cross and do it quickly, lest we be seen. Once we start we must not stop.” She looked him over critically. “We will rest now.”
Moira knelt, scanning the meadow and the sky above it while Wiz caught his breath.
“Moira?”
“What?” She did not stop searching the meadow.
“We’re being chased, right?”
“That is why we are running.”
“Well then, can I ask a dumb question?”
“Of course,” the hedge witch said in a tone that indicated he had been doing nothing else.
“Why are we being chased? What did we do?”
“We did nothing. It is you they want, Sparrow, and they want you because Patrius Summoned you at the cost of his own life.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“We do not know that, Sparrow.”
“Do they know?”
“I doubt it.”
Wiz shifted slightly. “Well, if you don’t know and they don’t know then why the bloody—heck—are they chasing us?”
“They hope to learn from you what Patrius’s aim was.”
“But I don’t know either!”
Moira snorted. “I doubt they will take your unconstrained word for that, Sparrow.”
“Look, I don’t want any part of this, okay? Can’t we talk to them? Isn’t there some way I can prove I don’t know anything and then they can leave me alone.”
“Sparrow, listen to me,” Moira turned to him. “The Dark League of the South is not interested in your innocence or guilt. The fact that Patrius Summoned you is enough to make them want you. Probably they want to squeeze you for the knowledge we both know you do not possess. Possibly they simply want you dead or worse.”
Moira laid her hand on his. “But either way, Sparrow,” she said gravely, “if you are given a choice between the worst death you can imagine and falling alive into the hands of the League, do everything in your power to die.”
Wiz dropped his eyes from her intense stare. “I get the picture.”
“Good.” She turned back to the clearing and checked the ground and sky again. “Then make ready. We will not try to run because the ground is boggy, but walk quickly!”
Moira rose and moved into the clearing with Wiz on her heels. The thigh-high grass whisked against their legs as they walked and the soil squished beneath their feet. Unlike the forest, the meadow was rich with life. Insects buzzed and chirped, frogs croaked or plonked into puddles as they went by. Dragonflies flitted by and once a yellow-and-black butterfly circled their heads.
In spite of the sunshine and wildlife, Wiz wasn’t cheered. Except for an occasional bush, the travelers were the tallest things in the meadow. He felt like a large and very conspicuous bug on a very flat rock, and the further they got from the suddenly friendly line of trees, the more nervous he became.
Moira was feeling it too. She pushed ahead faster, her head turning constantly. She dared not use active magic, but she listened as hard as she could for any sign of others’ magic.
Suddenly Moira dropped in her tracks. She went down so quickly that Wiz thought she had tripped.
“Get down!” she hissed and Wiz sprawled in the wet dirt beside her.
“What?” Wiz whispered.
“Something in the air of to our left. No, don’t look! The flash of your face might betray us.” After a second she bobbed her head up for a quick look.
“Fortuna!” she breathed. “It is searching the area. All right, see that tree ahead of us?” She nodded towards a big bush a few yards up the trail. “When I give the signal, crawl to it. Understand?” Again her head bobbed up. “Now!”
On hands and knees they crawled for what seemed to Wiz to be an eternity. He dared not raise his head, so all he saw was a narrow strip of wet black earth and green grass stems on each side. By the time he pulled up under the bush he was panting, and not entirely from exertion.
They dragged themselves back far under the overhanging branches, heedless of the mud or the tiny crawling things in the litter of dead leaves. As soon as they were settled, Moira pulled her cloak off her pack and threw it over them, turning two people into one lumpy brown mass and leaving just a narrow crack to see out.
Even as frightened as he was, Wiz was exhilarated by Moira’s closeness. Her warmth and the sweet, clean odor of her was wonderful and the danger added spice.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Shhh.”
Then a shadow passed over them and Wiz saw what they were hiding from.
The dragon glided noiselessly above the trail they had just left. Its hundred-foot batwings were stiff and unmoving as it let the warm air rising from the meadow bear it up. Its long flat tail twitched slightly as it steered its chosen course. The four legs with their great ripping talons were pressed close to its body and its sinuous neck was fully extended. It came so low and so close that Wiz could see the row of white fangs in its slightly open mouth.
Wiz’s breath caught and he tried to sink into the dirt. Instinctively he grabbed Moira’s hand and they clung together like frightened children while the nightmare beast swooped above trees and turned to cross the meadow from another direction.
Clearly the monster had seen something on the water meadow. Again it glided across and again it flew directly over the bush where Wiz and Moira cowered. Wiz felt as if the dragon’s gaze had stripped him naked.
Four times the dragon flew over the meadow and four times Wiz trembled and shrank under Moira’s cloak. Finally it pulled up and disappeared over the trees.
For long minutes after, Wiz and Moira lay huddled and shaking. At last Moira threw the cloak back and sat up. Reluctantly, Wiz followed suit.
“Was that thing looking for us?”
he breathed at last.
“Very likely,” Moira said, scanning the skies warily.
“Are there more of them?”
“Dragons are usually solitary creatures and one so big would need a large hunting territory.”
She frowned. “Still, I do not know of any like that who live nearby. Wild dragons make ill neighbors. It may be the one from the southern lake or it might be one of the ones who lair in the hills to the east. If it is coursing this far afield there may be others.”
“Wonderful,” Wiz muttered.
Moira sighed shakily. “I dislike playing hideabout with dragons, but we should be safe enough if we stay under the trees and are careful about crossing open spaces.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“There is risk, of course,” Moira continued, half to herself. “The forested ways are not always the most free of magic. Besides, with the forest close around us we will not have as much warning of the approach of others.”
“Others?”
“Trolls, wolves, evil men and others who do the League’s work.”
“Great,” Wiz said.
Moira missed the irony entirely. “Not great, but our best chance, I think.” She folded the cloak. “Now come. Quickly.”
###
“Well?” Atros demanded.
“The searchers are out as you commanded, Master,” said the new Master of the Sea of Scrying. “But so far nothing.”
“With all the magic of the League you cannot find two insignificant mortals?” Atros rumbled.
The Master, only hours in his post, licked his lips and tried not to look past Atros’s shoulder at the place where a newly flayed skin hung, still oozing blood, on the stone wall of the chamber. The skin of a very fat man.
“It is not easy Master. Bal-Simba—cursed be his name!—has been casting confusion spells, muddying the trail at the beginning. The Council’s Watchers are on the alert and we cannot penetrate too deeply nor see too clearly.” He paused. “We do know he has not taken the Wizard’s Way.”
Atros rubbed his chin. Walking the Wizard’s Way was the preferred method of travel for those who had the magical skill to use it. But it was also easy to detect anyone upon it Perhaps this strange wizard preferred stealth to speed.