The Tome of Arbor (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 9)

by M. R. Mathias

  The dog gave protest, both with barks of irritation and in Vanx’s mind, but Vanx ignored him. As soon as Moonsy had the dog below deck, Vanx, Gallarael, and Master Ruuk, were in the longboat and Chelda rowed it to the shore.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  Her kiss was like a candle flame,

  and it burned when she touched him.

  When two days passed and it still burned,

  he knew she’d gave him something.

  – A sailor’s song

  The Zythians who teleported to the island were afraid. They’d lost one of their companions to the lake dragon and were not all that seasoned, save for the one who volunteered to go into the island’s interior with Vanx, Ruuk, Chelda, and Gal. His name was Master Practon. Moonsy was to stay with the other Zythians and keep burning the webs out of the trees along the shore. More importantly, she was to keep the Adventurer in sight, and their landing area secure, in case they all had to flee in a hurry.

  Vanx figured every little bit of web burning would help. The Goss seemed to agree, but was causing Vanx’s blood to itch. There was something urgent going on, and since Vanx now understood he couldn’t take his time about finding and relocating the gem-seeds anymore, he thought the whole world might be coming undone as they stood there.

  The Goss sent a wave of less nauseating agreement washing through him, but it didn’t make Vanx feel any better to know he was right. The Goss was urging him, though, so he followed, knowing that his friends were following because they trusted him and thought he knew what he was doing. He wished he did, but he didn’t have any idea what fate awaited them.

  Master Ruuk’s shielding not only sizzled any of the hornet spiders to a cinder when they came in contact with the field, but it gave off a low vibrating hum, which deterred the winged bastards from getting too close in the first place.

  They wound their way up the mountainous hill, and it wasn’t long before Vanx could hear, and then see, a great waterfall tumbling down the massive upthrust of rock that separated this area from the rest of the island.

  “The mountain itself is a divider,” Ruuk observed. “The barriers you showed me on that map run down the ridgelines, I’d guess.”

  They did, but here was this healthy waterfall, right in the middle. For a moment, something came to Vanx. The idea that the boundaries had been formed more to protect this grand valley with an open view of the sea than for any other purpose made sense, but they all converged on the lazing stone, on the other side of the mountain, not here.

  The Goss led him through a thorny thicket, and tried to get them in a shrub field. They skirted that, and walked right onto a flat walking path that led under, and behind, the waterfall’s heaviest flow.

  There were several columns, all in a perfect row, and they had carvings on them but Vanx couldn’t focus on the detail. Master Practon offered to stay at the entry alcove they found. The others started up the stairs leading in.

  “Keep this exit clear,” Master Ruuk told the other Zythian.

  “If you hear us leaving another way, you might want to mark your way back to the ship in a hurry,” Chelda said. “The last time we went in a place like this, we ended up a dozen miles away from where we started.”

  “‘Tis true,” Vanx agreed. “By the Goddess, I miss that dog’s senses when he isn’t here,” Vanx grumbled more to himself than any of them.

  Usually he could draw upon Poops’s keener hearing and sense of smell. His own senses had sharpened, and the sickly feeling of the sea compromising his magic had gone away once he bonded with the pooch, though. He loved Sir Poopsalot immensely. He loved Gallarael, too, even if her current bipedal, black, hard-skinned form wasn’t appealing. He loved Chelda and even Master Ruuk, and he did his best to convey these emotions to the Goss. He wasn’t sure if the strange spider understood, or not, and now, as they came upon a row of man high symbols, carved into panels on the wall of the cavern the hall lead them into, he knew it was time to either flee or trust the Goss.

  The dank chamber was only illuminated because of Master Ruuk’s light spell. Chelda was running her hands in the channel of a helmeted man’s skull. She was in awe of the simple, yet perfectly clear chiseling of the warrior, but it looked like she was picking the depicted man’s nose.

  “Just—,” he stammered. “Just wait here.”

  Vanx then went to the center symbol. It was a crude rendering of a man with a spider in his belly. The spider was exactly like the spider on the handle of the looking glass, and what happened next surprised everyone, except for Vanx.

  Vanx stood with his back to the symbol. The panel made a grating sound as it flipped, in half a heartbeat, leaving Vanx’s friends looking at whatever was carved on the back of the stone slab.

  Vanx’s cool left him when he saw several hundred sets of eyes looking back at him. He cast a light spell into existence. It was the equivalent of a healthy candle, and its illumination revealed a hundred or more blue streaked spiders, of all shapes and sizes.

  Behind him, he could hear Chelda banging on the panel with her war hammer. He almost laughed despite the utter fear that gripped him.

  Having experienced Sissy in the Hoar Witch’s dungeon, he knew what these arachnoids could do to him, if they chose. The fact they hadn’t yet was his only solace.

  Compelled forward by the Goss inside him, he moved slowly down the spider-lined corridor, marveling at the differences of them. They were all individually marked with a unique sky blue pattern on their abdomen, but some were long and aggressive looking, while others seemed more reclusive and shy. His heart started to calm until he found he’d been ushered into a larger cavern. He felt the Goss leave him then, and a huge, blue glowing spider dropped from above. It had several sets of eyes, and fangs dripping hot lime colored stuff that Vanx figured would pulp his insides while he hung cocooned somewhere.

  Thinking clearly now that the spider’s taint no longer had him feeling ill, he cast a protection, and then drew his sword. He didn’t square off with the thing or make any other aggressive move. He just drew his sword and stood there.

  The spider darted in though and, after Vanx leapt out of its way, it started circling, making its intention to fight him very clear.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Four

  On an old barrel keg,

  in the shade I sat.

  With my pint of watered ale,

  and that skinny old cat.

  – Parydon Cobbles

  Vanx wasn’t sure if he should kill the thing or not, but he wasn’t about to let it get him so easily.

  He tried relying on magic, not his blade, and found that so many spells came to mind that he couldn’t choose one.

  The spider was chest high to him, and as big as a horse in the middle. Apparently, the numerous other arachnids were being held at bay, by fear or force, Vanx couldn’t guess. All he knew was he was leaping in a somersault through appendages lined with grasping little spikes, past green venom dripping fangs, only to land on the spider’s middle section.

  From there, Vanx cast the most powerful light spell he could muster.

  Moonsy would be proud. He laughed at himself. And Chelda’s tongue would finally be stilled if they could see.

  This orb was stark and harsh and caused a multitude of the larger spider’s chums to scoot back and even recede from the chamber.

  “Do you want to die?” Vanx yelled as he back flipped off the thing before it could shake him free.

  Can you kill me? A voice resounded in his head. It was deep and ancient and as full of curiosity as it was anger.

  The spider spun then and darted in far faster than Vanx was ready for. It rose up, and used its front legs to coral him, and then it brought its fangs down hard.

  Vanx’s magical protection scalded the spider’s maw, and maybe broke one of its teeth.

  “Can you kill me is the question?” Vanx returned.

  The spider disappeared from in front of him then, and Vanx’s light spe
ll vanished. Vanx fell to his knees and crumpled into a heap on the filthy uneven floor.

  Yes I can, came the voice. The Goss was inside him again. He could feel that it was what was speaking to him. It was what he’d just faced, what had just stolen his mind and will from him. It had left him on the floor, unable to escape the score of spiders that were, even now, closing in to devour him.

  Just as he started to feel the hairy feelers touching him, another grating sound filled his ears. Up from the floor, a round pedestal rose. Sitting on it was a sapphire gem-seed. It’s glow, and the power radiating from it, caused the spiders around him to recede.

  There is no time to waste, the voice warned. We must quicken the seed before the moon turns or all of us will perish.

  “Where do we smash it?” Vanx asked, feeling stupid for talking to himself in an eerie blue glowing chamber.

  You must use the gossamer lens, the voice responded. And Vanx wasn’t sure that the little spider wouldn’t just recluse into the handle of the looking glass and stay there, but even if it did, he would be rid of the sickly feeling.

  It was worth a try.

  Just then, Chelda finally cracked the stone panel. Vanx grabbed the gem-seed and ran, more by memory than by sight, toward the sound. Her next blow shattered the rock and filled the halls and chamber, now behind him, with bright daylight.

  Vanx heard Chelda screaming and Gallarael cursing, when all the blue tinted spiders swarmed over them and raced into the forest.

  “Kill them.” Chelda batted at her hair after they were all gone. “Kill them Vanx, get them off me.”

  “Look.” Gallarael’s voice shifted from slithery and felinic, to her human tone, as her body shifted, too.

  Vanx had to shake a chill from his spine, but he was no less transfixed by what she was indicating.

  The blue spiders were making great net-like webs between the trees. When the red glowing hornets would get caught in the webs, the smaller blue arachnids would speed in and cocoon them.

  Dead limbs fell to the ground. After they crashed, the larvae in the suffocating webs were spun into cocoons by spiders controlled by the Goss.

  This sensation carried right over the ridge. A few huge white marked tarantula-like spiders emerged from somewhere and, after toppling the trees that had been killed by the spider webs, they crossed right past the boundary as if it was no longer there.

  It was then that Vanx heard the strange colored dragon’s roar.

  He didn’t see it, but he had the feeling he would be back here. Not anytime soon he hoped, for through the forests, a war of spiders was raging. The blue marked ones went after the red marked ones, and the white marked arachnids that shared the section of the island the dragon used, started killing all of the others, no matter their color.

  “To the ship,” he ordered. “We have what we need, and the book should tell us where to go.”

  With that, they hustled right past Master Practon, and then made their way back to the shore. A few moments later, they were all back on the Adventurer.

  The ship started sailing without a heading, just to avoid the curiosity of the angry dragon now circling over the spider infested island.

  “I hope they all kill each other!” Chelda said while stripping on the deck. Vanx didn’t wait to see how that turned out. Instead, he hurried to his cabin and opened the wooden box, allowing the Goss back into the handle of the looking glass.

  When he shut the lid and opened the Tome of Arbor, he knew, without a doubt, the spider was weaving him a gossamer lens. The ship sensed this, too, and was ready to know their destination.

  It was just bad luck that all the extra Zythians were still aboard. There was no time to drop them off unless their destination turned out to be the Isle of Zyth, but that would be up to the Goss.

  The End

  Book Nine - The Tome of Arbor

  Please enjoy the first three chapters of:

  The Legend of Vanx Malic

  Book 10 - A Gossamer Lens

  The Legend of Vanx Malic

  Book 10 - A Gossamer Lens

  Copyright 2016 Michael Robb Mathias Jr.

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter

  One

  At the first sign of disease, certain shoots and runners should be nipped. Never give a blight enough time to infect the sap, for this could be detrimental.

  - The Tome of Arbor

  Vanx Malic looked at the little blue spider still spinning its web inside the box. It was doing so inside the open ring of the golden looking glass he’d found. The Goss, as the tiny blue marked, arachnoid was called, was no less strange than the box or the looking glass. The magic of the web it was spinning was far stranger than any of it. Or maybe it was the looking glass that added the magic. Vanx hadn’t figured it out yet.

  Either way, by looking through a lens formed of the spider’s silk, he’d seen the pages of the Tome of Arbor come to life. This time he was hoping to have a longer experience and a chance to read what was written about each tree.

  Of course, he would do those things after he learned where the sapphire gem-seed in his satchel needed to grow and made sure they were on the fastest route there. They had very little time to place it and, if they failed, they would all die, so getting that part done was paramount.

  His ship, the Adventurer, had taken them out into the open sea, where they were, more-or-less, sailing in circles, waiting to learn where they needed to go. The sea was calm but the swells were large and caused the ship to lean one way or the other as it went.

  The island they’d just left could still be seen on the horizon. The consensus was that no one on board wanted to go back there right now. Millions of spiders, some marked with red glowing starbursts, some marked with bright blue stripes, or splotches, as the Goss was, were all battling in the forests. A score of albinic, ship-sized tarantulas that looked to have not seen the light of day for the entirety of their lives, had joined the fray as they were leaving. Vanx figured the three boundary walls were down, for the pale spiders had come from the second area they’d visited. The area where the dragon had shown itself.

  There were giant crabs, birds big enough to snatch an elf from the ground, and packs of savage bear-sized, ring-tailed, tree-coons, too. Those were probably trying to survive the spiders this very moment, but there was also that dragon. The wyrm was coral blue, or maybe light-turquoise, Vanx hadn’t been able to study the qualities of tone, because he’d been trying to keep from getting eaten, as Moonsy’s friend Anitha had. The wyrm had captured Vanx’s attention, though, in a way nothing had in a while. He’d shared time with mighty Pyra, had ridden her back, and battled powerful evil with her.

  It was a glorious feeling.

  Losing so much could crush a person. Vanx wouldn’t let that happen to himself. There was a hole in his heart, and there always would be, but he would not fall into despair over losing her.

  Pyra was gone now, but Vanx longed to ride a dragon again. Zeezle was trying to make contact with another wyrm, where they’d rooted the elmwood Heart Tree. Zeezle probably felt the same sort of emptiness over Kelse, the great green dragon’s death, as Vanx was feeling. Vanx might be able to do the same with the wyrm on this island, too.

  It wasn’t as if Vanx had a choice, though. The world was off balance, and the abnormal size of the swells they were riding seemed like proof. Anxiously, he peeked under the lid of the looking glass’s wooden case, and saw that the Goss was still busy spinning its web. It paused, and Vanx wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have looked back at him and smirked.

  He’d figured out that it was the Goss he’d faced in that cavern back on what he would forever recall as Spider Island. Whether the Goss was really that big, or really that small, was the question. It had only fought him long enough to see if he had mettle. It had been testing him. And now, as Vanx thought more about it, he figured the tiny Goss had needed the power of something in that cavern to become so large and intimidating. It was tiny, and no matter how
much Vanx didn’t like it, the spider was somehow bound to him. Vanx would end that, one way or another, when this was done. Since he was only half human, and therefore not fully controllable, the Goss agreed with the sentiment.

  “Where are we going?” Chelda asked from the doorway to his cabin. She was naked, having stripped on deck to make sure she had no spiders in her clothes, and due to her gargan size, she had to stoop over, causing her heavy breasts to pendulum about. She asked him a serious question, but his eyeballs followed her tits until Gallarael’s wooden cup bounced off his head.

  “Please put some clothes on.” Vanx rubbed at the knot.

  “Bah,” Chelda scoffed.

  “The Goss hasn’t shown me yet.” Vanx glared at Gallarael. “Now both of you, leave me alone until this is done.”

  “There are seven extra people aboard, Vanx,” Chelda growled.

  “Six,” Vanx corrected, reminding her that one of their group had been eaten by the lake dragon before Vanx froze it. She grunted and made her way to the galley, where they were all sleeping, and all their gear had been re-stowed.

  Master Ruuk and his group of Zythians were still on board and, as guests, they were using Vanx’s Captain’s Cabin and Chelda’s forecastle bunk room at night. But according to the Goss, there were only days left before the moon would turn and the world would wobble off its course through the ether and end them all, so the Zythians were along for the ride whether they wanted to be or not.

  Unless the Goss sent them to Zyth.

  Vanx paced across the floor to shut the door, but Master Ruuk shouldered his way in, and Gallarael came with him.

  “They would get out from under foot, if you’d let them come down,” Ruuk said.