Day of the Hunt (The Faun Quartet Book 2)

by Chris J Edwards

  I had barely closed my eyes when a hand touched me.

  I woke with a start; my hammock swung from my sudden movement.

  “Shhh! It’s just me. It’s Dawn,” came a whisper from the dark.

  I strained my eyes to see. I could barely make out her shape.

  “What – what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  I looked around. No one else stirred. Herace was still passed out on the floor, one boot off. He had a habit of taking off a single boot when he was drunk. It was rather odd.

  I got out of my hammock and followed Dawn through the cramped common quarters. She led me up the steps to the top deck.

  The sky above was clear and beautiful; the stars were bright and so dense that it looked like white sand scattered on a black cloth. The water around us was smooth, almost glassy, and as I squinted off to the south I had a hard time telling the sea from the firmament, so clear was its reflection. We were sailing through the night sky.

  “Wow. This is incredible,” I said in a hushed voice.

  “Isn’t it?” she mused, wrapping her cloak snugly around her shoulders.

  We stared up into the sky for a few quiet moments. The only sound was that of the wind whispering through the lines, the slosh of water upon the hull.

  “Ortham… I have a question…” Dawn said in a small voice.

  I looked down to her. Her eyes sparkled in the starlight. My heart beat a little faster.

  “What is it?” I prompted.

  She looked down, then out to sea.

  “Could you… I mean, you don’t have to, if you’re not comfortable with it… but could you teach me battle-magick?”

  I frowned. That was not the question I had been expecting.

  “Battle-magick? I mean… I could, I guess. But I don’t think you’d like it.”

  “How do you know?”

  I put my thumbs into my belt and walked around absentmindedly.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s really uncomfortable. It’ll hurt every time. That’s just the nature of it; you always end up aching, no matter how careful you are. Like lifting a great weight, or running a long distance. And it’s dangerous. The most volatile of the four neutral magicks,” I explained, then looked over to see her still awaiting my answer. “Why do you even want to learn? I thought Majira wanted you to learn scrying like her. Or coaxing, or even healing. That’s more sylfolk-ish.”

  “Because,” she replied. “I can’t just rely on others to defend me. Especially now that there’s just the three of us.”

  She had a good point. I thought about it for a long moment. I had never taught someone else how to use magick before – I probably wouldn’t be very good at it. But if I really was going to be the court battle-mage, I needed to learn.

  “Sure. I’ll teach you. Don’t be frustrated if you don’t get it right away, though; it took me a long time to figure it out,” I said. “At least you won’t have to enlarge your reservoir and stretch your soul. That’s the painful part.”

  I took her over to the edge of the ship. We wouldn’t actually cast anything; it would be too bright, too loud to actually cast and I didn’t want to wake the ship. Or light it on fire.

  I decided to teach her the bare basics of fulgimancy; the conjuration and direction of lightning. It was my speciality. I didn’t get much into the theory of volume versus intensity or anything – that was too complicated and I was too tired to really do it justice. So I just showed her a quick way to focus a bolt; the way to prepare your soul for the cast, how to release the energy from your reservoir, and the simple hand gesture.

  She practiced over and over. For hours. I wanted to go back to sleep, but she just wanted to keep practicing. I admired her determination - even if it was keeping me up into the deep night, when the sun was furthest buried beneath the horizon.

  “Am I doing it right?” she asked for the hundredth time, pointing her hand out to sea.

  “Yep, looks like it. Can’t really tell unless you actually cast, though,” I said, sitting against the mast.

  I immediately regretted saying that.

  “Okay! I’m going to try it,” she said, readjusting her position.

  I jumped to my feet.

  “No, wait! I really don’t think we should try that here - ”

  But it was too late. Dawn drew the symbol in the air and pointed both hands off the side of the ship.

  Everything went white.

  There was a pop; I was knocked off my feet, landing hard on my arse. My hat flew off my head.

  A cataclysmic boom resonated, louder than anything I had ever heard. I regained my vision to see sheets of white lightning crackle through the sky. The whole vessel shuddered as the thunderous wave flashed out into the night.

  I rolled onto my knees, dazed. My ears squealed and I blinked back tears. Dawn was lying on her back; she sat up and shook her head, eyes wide.

  I got to my feet and rushed to her side. She accepted my hand as I helped her up. I was shaking; she trembled.

  “How in all creation did you do that?” I asked incredulously, my own voice muffled inside my head.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” she said in shock, putting her hands to her temples.

  I had never seen such a display of fulgimancy - I wondered if such a cast could even be considered battle-magick anymore. That was beyond anything I had ever seen – far beyond the scope of what I knew. The amount of power, the sheer volume required to have set off lightning of that scale… I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  As my hearing returned I perceived the sound of sailors waking from their doleful watch, running beneath the deck and shouting.

  Dawn and I shared a panicked look. We didn’t need words to communicate our next move. We hurried back down below-decks to her quarters and closed the door fast behind us.

  She collapsed onto her bed, face down. I slumped against the wall. I could hear the heavy footsteps of the crew rushing to and fro; I could hear their voices asking what had just happened. A thunderstorm on a clear night? I would be surprised, too.

  I shook my head and laughed. Dawn looked over and started laughing too. It was absurd.

  “Let’s never do that again,” I said.

  “Ha. Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever try battle-magick again. You were right. It did hurt.”

  I waited until the clamour died down. Eventually everyone settled, probably just wondering what in the world had happened.

  Once it was quiet again, I rose to leave.

  Dawn was already asleep. I walked over and covered her with her blanket. She looked so peaceful, the moonlight on her face. My heart fluttered as I watched her sleep. I had never seen something so pretty.

  But then a sadness came over me. A bittersweet wave washed over my heart; I realized I could never really be with her. We were just playing this silly game now that she was away from court, away from all her responsibilities and expectations. There was no tradition here, no decorum, and we were free to do as we chose; but one day, I bitterly recognized, we would have to return – and these days of freedom and play-pretend would be over.

  I knelt beside the bed. Her doleful breath rustled through her wavy, chestnut hair. Despite myself, despite the wretched knowledge that she could never be mine, I leaned in and kissed her cheek.

  “Goodnight Dawn…” I whispered.

  I stood and walked to the door, stepped out into the dark hallway. I glanced back once more to her sleeping figure.

  I don’t know if it was just a trick of the moonlight, or if I was just tired, but I think I saw a subtle smile upon her lips.

  I closed the door behind me and reluctantly took my leave.

  37

  Bram Tan Heth

  As I lay dying a shape blocked out the morning sun.

  I was too weakened by thirst to truly wake; I could barely open my sand-crusted eyes. Strange voices floated through my semi-consc
iousness. I felt my body lifted, thin and ragged, and placed gently down not upon sand or rock, but upon a wicker frame.

  For days I lapsed in an out of the waking world – the sleeping world was a distorted mess of half-dreamt realities. I felt my soul leaving my body time and time again; only with immense effort, with what little strength remained in my emaciated body, did I keep my mortal frame together. I would not let death take me. Not yet.

  At long last I opened my eyes fully. I was in a small tent; cream-coloured cloth drooped overhead. I was lying on a wicker travois. A vaguely familiar face loomed above me, damp cloth in hand. He stood up suddenly as I opened my eyes and looked at him – it was the hobgoblin I had contacted in the dreamscape.

  He said something excitedly in a foreign tongue. I opened my mouth to speak but only a dry rustle came out. I coughed. My tongue was painfully dry.

  The hobgoblin knelt beside me. He lifted the back of my head with his hand, propping it up, and let me drink from a wrinkled water-skin. The water was tepid but glorious. I wanted to drink and drink until I drowned, but he took it away from me, shaking his head.

  Then he got up and left.

  I lifted myself onto my elbows. My whole body was sore. But I still had a body – I was still alive. And that was enough.

  I rocked myself forward and managed to get myself into a sitting position. I had to close my eyes to dissipate the dizziness that overcame me.

  A moment later the flap of my tent was thrown back. There was now a crowd of folk staring down at me, all talking and muttering to one another.

  A tall ur-man with a blue head-wrap knelt down to me. He had tall brown riding boots and a weathered face, unshaven for many weeks. He said something to me in a foreign tongue. I shook my head. He tried another tongue. I shook my head.

  “Urvish?” He then asked.

  “Yes. Urvish,” I replied, relieved.

  “Ah, from the coast, eh?” he asked in a raspy voice.

  “No. Much further. Across the Violet Ocean,” I replied, massaging my sore throat.

  He nodded and frowned, scratched his chin.

  “By all that’s holy, how did you end up in the middle of the desert? Were you robbed?” he asked.

  “In a sense, yes. My travelling companion was killed. I wandered for days.”

  “My, that’s quite a story… but I have a better one,” he said, leaning in and dropping his voice. “One of my caravan guards told me the most unbelievable tale the other morning. He told me that, in the middle of the night, a spectre appeared to him in a dream and lead him to a dying elf way out in the desert. And much to my surprise, he went out and found exactly that same elf… unbelievable, no?”

  I held my tongue. I did not know what this ur-man was trying to say; I did not know this land, their customs. His tone was accusatory, almost menacing.

  “Oh, come now, stranger,” the ur-man said. “Won’t you speak upon such an unbelievable event? Surely you might know something about that, no? After all, it was you we found, wasting away in the sands… if I were you, I would be singing my heart’s joy.”

  “That is unbelievable,” I cautiously replied. “Strange things happen in the wilderness. And I am grateful that the Maker chose to spare me.”

  The ur-man smiled. Some of his teeth were silver.

  “Very wise. The Maker indeed…” he said, looking over his shoulder to the gathered crowd.

  He stood up. The crowd backed away.

  “Are you well enough to stand?” he asked.

  I tried to get up. My legs were incredibly weak. Two of the gathered folk helped raise me to my feet. But they didn’t let me go; they dragged me behind the ur-man to a spacious tent. I noticed then, as they dragged me, that we were in a sea of tents; much larger than the small caravan I had seen in the dream-scape.

  Inside the big tent they dropped me to the ground, onto a carpet. The ur-man sat down on a three-legged stool and took up a feathered fly-swatter. He crossed his legs and looked down on me dispassionately, flicking the fly-swatter back and forth. He nodded to the two folk who had dragged me in. They left the tent.

  “You are lucky they don’t speak Urvish. If they understood, I would have torn your tongue out for lying to me, wizard,” he said.

  I swallowed. I did not doubt him.

  “Do you know what the punishment for wizardry is out here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. He smiled a silver-toothed grin.

  “Death. Not a quick, pleasant one either. Slow and painful,” he said, snapping the fly-swatter in the air. “But of course, Immuraz is a man of commerce; not some desert whelp clinging to the laws of half-starved nomads…”

  Immuraz, as I assumed was his name, barked some command. After a moment a pretty young ur-maiden appeared from behind a cloth screen with two wine goblets and a wine jug. She placed the goblets onto a low wicker table and waited with the wine-jug in hand.

  “Please, pick,” said the ur-man, gesturing to the goblets.

  I took the nearest one. Immuraz took the other. The ur-maiden poured us each half a glass, then disappeared back behind the screen on the other side of the spacious tent.

  I did not drink. Neither did he. Immuraz studied me with narrowed eyes.

  “Three hundred years. You see this? Three hundred years,” he said, gesturing to everything all at once but nothing in particular. “Three hundred years we fought against the nomads. They clung to the sands, to the coastal mountains, to the cracked plains, as dogged as rats. Nothing we did could push them away, could allow us to build our colonies.”

  Immuraz took a sip of wine.

  “But we were determined. My folk would do anything to settle in this land – it’s why the Maker placed us here. We knew we could not outlast them; we knew we would never outnumber them. So we did what we do best – what both our folk do best, elf. We organized ourselves. We raised caravans, struck trade with the friendly tribes, and slowly but surely encroached upon the low folk. We mapped the trackless deserts. Dominated the weakest tribes. Built cities and garrisons. But two things made the greatest difference,” he said, leaning forward with a grin. “We outlawed all unsanctioned magick, and we hired folk from far away to fight our wars.”

  I nodded. I knew what he wanted. I took a sip of the wine.

  “And now, after three hundred years, we are finally winning. Finally making room for ourselves. So let me ask you again, wanderer… how exactly is it possible you appeared in one of my guards’ dreams?”

  I smiled. There was no good way out of this situation – but there was a least bad way. I just needed more time to heal my soul, more time to refill my reserve, and then I could disappear.

  But for now I just had to survive.

  “Well, because I’m a magus,” I replied simply, taking another sip of wine.

  Immuraz grinned widely. His silver teeth shone.

  “Ah, the truth. A refreshing sound in such a deceitful clime. Even the sands produce mirages… a seer, I suppose?” he asked.

  I nodded. He grinned wider.

  “And I imagine not sanctioned. Not if you’re from across the Violet Ocean… well, I have a proposition for you, wandering magus,” he said. “I will not mete out colonial justice – I will spare your life. But only if you do something for me.”

  I was already bored of his failed intimidation.

  Did he really think that I, Magus Bram Tan Heth the Mad, could be cowed into serving against my will? I, who had wandered in places where the bones of giants and behemoths mouldered in the hillsides, where unseeing skulls of strange beasts grinned idiotically from the cliff faces; I, who had witnessed the benighted pits of the deepest Witchlands – a place where slavering horrors of infernal flesh writhed and pulsated, a mockery to life itself, blaspheming against the very night sky under which it coiled, and abyssal catacombs so dark and empty that not even the Maker himself remembered their creation? Did he not KNOW what unfathomable terrors slunk amid the insidious slim
e of that awful place, that blighted lesion, festering in the east, as another vowed fanatically to blast all to a state of infinite, unimaginable nothingness?

  I couldn’t help but laugh. This caravan-master could never comprehend the smallest mote of my forbidden knowledge.

  The ur-man’s smile morphed into a sneer as I laughed. He stood up and pointed the fly-swatter at me.

  “You dare laugh at me? After I spared you from the desert wastes?” he said, voice trembling with anger. “Some nameless cur!”

  I looked up to him. I couldn’t help but laugh now; it was pouring out like rot from a decayed, fallen tree.

  “My name,” I laughed, “Is Magus Bram Tan Heth the Mad. And you, desert-merchant, are the real cur.”

  He raised the fly-swatter over my head, ready to strike, eyes flashing with rage.

  “That would be a bad idea,” I said, trying to stifle a giggle. “Very bad for you. For the whole caravan. For everyone.”

  He hesitated. But not for long.

  He barked out another order in a strange tongue. The tent flap burst open and two caravan guards stepped in. They grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to my feet. I was still laughing; they loosened their grip but didn’t let go. I could feel their nervousness.

  The Black Laughter had a wicked aura all its own. It chilled even my blood.

  Immuraz stared into my face.

  “You will regret your insolence, mad wizard. I will have you flayed, your flesh stretched above the gates of Fort Dovr-kain,” he hissed. “No one insults Immuraz and lives!”

  I laughed and laughed. I watched his face melt. So did mine. They dripped onto the carpet, swirling and gnashing with their jawless teeth. Did he know how absurd he sounded? Threatening the flesh – the flesh was temporary. My flesh was a cage around a rotting soul.

  I laughed as they dragged me back out into the sand. Others had gathered, wondering what was so funny. Everything was funny. Even the sun laughed, fat dog-tongue lolling out the side of its idiot face, piggish little eyes glinting.

  “A H H AH A H A !” it laughed.