Smart Alec in the Dark Lands

by Donald Wigboldy

  Nodding, the blue woman stood up slowly and removed the skirt before walking into the water of the lake. She sat down cross legged and the water was almost to her breasts. With her hands steepled in front of her and her elbows on her knees, the genasi closed her eyes and Alec noticed water begin to flow upwards over her skin thickening into what looked like liquid armor. It covered her chest and the same space on her back.

  Shaelamee didn't move for nearly an hour as if in meditation. While the genasi rested in her strange way, Helios opened his pack and began to eat. He had used a lot of magic and, if he was human, Alec assumed that he would need to replace his energy just from it eating away at his reserves. The food was a quick, simple fix for magic usage, though it wasn't as efficient as a wizard could hope.

  Watching the blue girl, Alec and Helios remained near the salamanders keeping an eye out while they waited.

  Chapter 8- A Hollow Night

  The hour passed slowly for the novice wizard. He kept an eye out for hollows and other dangerous wild life that might remain near the Catliss Lake as well. Alec wasn't even completely sure what was and what wasn't dangerous in this foreign land.

  When Shaelamee finally stood up, the water continued to cling to her like armor. It glistened and rippled with each breath she took. Concealing her more private of parts with this magical ability, the genasi nearly looked respectable even though she was basically naked aside from the concealing water.

  He watched the blue skinned girl retrieve her skirt and replace it cinching the belt holding the straps together. With her armored breast plate damaged beyond use, Shaelamee went to her pack next to pull out a simple looking cloth. It was lightweight and already appeared to glisten like it was wet. This was a material like he had never seen before and the young wizard couldn't help watching her tie one end around her neck before letting the rest drape down her front.

  Kept loose, the tied part drooped a little below her collarbone but the lower, untied portion still came down to her mid stomach. The young woman took the remaining ends and started to draw them back to tie them finishing the top. A shocked gasp made Shaelamee drop the cloth again hugging her ribs as she felt renewed pain.

  "Are you alright?" Alec asked with worry. The boy thought that he recognized a similar feeling from Helios' look, but the silver scaled face was just foreign enough to make him uncertain.

  Her voice was breathy as she replied after taking several breaths to cope with the pain. "I can't reach behind me to tie this in place. If you are going to continue to be so strange about what is natural, then one of you will need to tie it for me."

  "The Alec can do it," Helios said waving the boy over as he used his name in an odd way.

  "The Alec," the girl chuckled one moment before groaning. "Oh, don't make me laugh. It still hurts."

  Feeling like they were messing with him, the young wizard still decided to move behind Shaelamee before reaching around her to grab the two corners of the simple cloth. It seemed to be more or less a square, but the genasi had brought it for a reason, he supposed. Perhaps among her people this was the way to make their version of a blouse, Alec guessed, pulling the corners back to where he could try to tie them together.

  "Not too tight," she cautioned as he started to make a simple knot.

  Once tied, Alec stepped back towards his mount noting that the light red cloth actually looked surprisingly complete. It was almost something like he might see the village girls wear during the summer months. Southwall had bitter cold winters; so when the country warmed, the younger folk in particular took advantage of the weather as much as they could. Bare midriffs weren't necessarily common but as a young boy he had still noticed them, especially when he was shorter and closer to eye level with such things.

  Shae picked up her bracers and replaced her armor leggings without needing more help before Helios asked, "Will you be able to continue? If you can't even reach behind your back to tie a shirt, maybe you should return to Naermere?"

  "I'll be fine." Her green eyes lifted to the dragon man determinedly.

  Shrugging, Helios added, "Well, I can't guarantee to protect you if your injury causes you to fall behind."

  "I won't fall behind," the girl countered almost pouting as her lower lip moved forward slightly. "Let's just go and find whatever is making the hollows act unusually, and then we can return to Naermere where I can rest. It isn't a serious injury. I can fight if I need to. I still used my magic even after that thing crushed my armor with its tentacle, if you might have noticed."

  Alec looked at the lake wondering if the monster would dare to come back. He guessed that the two wizards had caused a lot of damage to it before the beast had retreated. Thinking about the fight also made him start to frown. He hadn't been able to help at all.

  "Stop making that face," Shae said quietly as she walked past him towards her mount.

  Frowning a moment longer, the novice wizard replied, "I wasn't any help against that thing."

  Stopping to assess the boy in front of her, the blue girl asked, "Can you breathe under water? Can you fly above it or walk on water?"

  At the shake of his head, she surprised him and stated, "Then maybe we need to teach you. Now stop looking so disappointed. I am fine... relatively. There is no real harm done. Perhaps you will be able to show us something in the future to make up for having to watch us fight this time."

  He had expected her to tell him not to worry about it. That was what most people said when trying to avoid hurting your feelings when you were useless, but offering to teach him magic that he didn't know... that had been a surprise. After only knowing her for a day, Alec was pretty certain that the girl actually meant it. Perhaps she was teasing him again, but it didn't feel that way. Of course, he was no diplomacy wizard taught to see through people's facades to learn the truth behind their words, but still he was pretty certain.

  Shae stood before her mount and started to lift her arms cautiously. Lowering them again, it was another surprise when Helios stoically walked up behind the little wizard and lifted her gently up into her saddle. He made certain to lift her by the legs and yet managed to keep his hands in a place to let her move them when close enough to swing her legs over the beast to sit.

  She didn't look very comfortable to Alec's eyes, but the girl managed to not wince or gasp in pain so that was encouraging.

  Joining her on their salamanders, the three riders moved towards the forest that the hollows had retreated into earlier. They moved cautiously as they neared the cover of the trees and brush beneath them. It had been over an hour without sight of the creatures, but no one believed that they couldn't still be lingering just out of view.

  "The Soyanne Valley is past this forest," Helios said in a restrained, quiet way that managed to carry to the others as he halted outside of the tree line. "I can use tracking magic to follow their trail. Maybe following this group will bring us to whatever is making them act so strangely. We still need to keep a close watch. The trees will limit our ability to see them coming and to escape, so everyone be ready."

  The chilly looking lizard like eyes paused on the injured woman before returning to the trees in front of them. A quickly spoken spell complete with a few hand gestures acted as the cue to proceed while Helios appeared to follow a suddenly obvious trail.

  As they pushed into the brush, Alec noted the sounds of the mounts pushing through bushes and tall grass. A branch snapped making him wince. Trying to be stealthy by natural means seemed unlikely. They could only hope that their quarry were either far enough away or particularly unobservant.

  Pushing deeper into the woods, Alec tried to remember if there was a better spell that he might know to either help him hear something coming or a way to conceal their approach. He was still just a novice, however, and none of his limited number of spells that he could think of seemed appropriate to help though the other two didn't appear to have anything else useful either. Without those extra spells, the boy could only cringe as the large beasts
moved through the trees and do his best to avoid low branches that might sweep him off of the salamander's back.

  Without a sun to help guide his perception of time, the visitor to this world could only guess at the length of time that it took to make their way through it. Though it felt like hours, it could have just been one as far as he could tell to make their way to the far side of the forest. They never ran into a trap or otherwise spotted their quarry, however, and only Helios' use of magic held them on track as far as the novice knew.

  Hills rose up ahead of the riders. There was nothing to see ahead of them aside from grass and stone as far as the novice could spy. By the time they had exited the forest, Alec noticed that the light around them was a bit dimmer by comparison, however. The shade given by the tree canopy didn't seem to relent as the riders pushed outside the cover. Heading up towards the hills, Alec also noticed that there was a gap between them that had been hidden by the forest between the lake and this pass.

  Helios glanced up at the darkening sky and exhaled a disappointed sigh before announcing, "We should set up camp. It took us longer than planned and night will fall soon."

  Blue eyes had taken in the genasi as he spoke, but Helios didn't come out and blame Shaelamee at least.

  Frowning at the Zmaj even so, the girl questioned, "Do you want to set up camp out here in the open?"

  The silver scaled man noted some scrub off to the side. A thin trail of water came from the small mountain to the south winding its way back into the woods behind the riders feeding the grass and scrub on its way. Pointing his salamander to an area near the water, Helios guided the others over before dismounting.

  "We will camp here and enter the valley in the morning. Exploring in the night would be both dangerous and likely futile. If the threat of the hollows does stem from this place, then we certainly don't want to walk into a pack of them in the dark."

  Helios helped Shaelamee down from her ride without being asked. The blue girl didn't complain further or bother to argue with him. Alec watched curiously as the two of them interacted with only the gesture of their basic actions and silence.

  The dragon man went to his pack and pulled down a roll of canvas. Alec had just assumed it was a bedroll of some sort or maybe a tent, but as Helios drew several straight metal rods from it the boy was remained uncertain. The rods might be the ribs for a tent; but as the Zmaj took two of them twisting them together into a longer staff, the novice felt like these were something different.

  Watching Helios make several other seven foot long staves out of the remaining pieces of metal and then jamming them into the ground staking out a large circle around them, the boy was pretty certain that such an arrangement could hardly be used for a standard tent. Perhaps a commander's tent might cover a similar area, but Helios never set up any cross braces or tried to put up a canvas covering.

  A small black box with a pair of strange wires extending from it was drawn from the dragon's pack when the perimeter was set.

  "Bring your salamander inside the circle, Alec," Shae ordered while making it sound like more of a suggestion. She had already brought her own salamander closer to the center near Helios' mount.

  Following her lead, Alec joined Shaelamee as he continued to watch the dragon man's preparations. He held the box with one hand as the other began making odd gestures in a practiced way even as Helios chanted a new spell. Alec felt a surge in magical power. The box appeared to feed the wizard's spell making the power greater than he had seen Helios wield up until now as well. When the first shield of concentrated wind formed between the first two rods, the novice wasn't completely surprised. He had felt the rise of magic and knew where the focus had been as well.

  Five feet across and seven feet high like the rods, the wind shield filled out the space between the shafts for a moment before the next shield formed to the left of it. In short succession, each space between the rods was filled similarly. Soon the three of them, along with their mounts, were surrounded by wind screens and Helios set the box near the first rod. The wires were connected to the closest shaft and the novice felt the flow of magic trickling into the shields maintaining the spell so that the dragon man wasn't forced to continue feeding the shields himself.

  Alec knew there were ways to make spells feed off each other in a loop that could last with minimal effort from a wizard. Wind wizards could make wind screens that could ward them against the elements on long trips without draining their power, but it was a high end skill that not every wizard could figure out from what he knew. Most spells that were designed to last had the potential to be set similarly, but few wizards had been creative enough to make very many work that way.

  Helios turned back to his mount and pulled down another pack. Food was pulled out as well as the expected bedroll and the dragon man set up the future place for his sleep. While he gathered fuel for a fire to cook his supper, Shaelamee tried to pull down her own pack from behind the saddle on her salamander. Hissing in pain before rubbing her left rib gently, the girl stared at it looking helpless.

  Pulling the girl's pack down before moving back to his mount to gather his own, Alec handed it to Shaelamee without a word.

  "Thanks," Shae nodded her head making her glistening blue hair shift with the gesture.

  "You're welcome," the boy said being polite in response as he handed her the pack before turning back for the one behind his saddle. What was in his pack, he wasn't even certain. Alec hadn't packed this one and had no real possessions in this world. There had been a pack for his trip to the mountains, but that was still back in Southwall.

  Noting his glance towards the fence, Shaelamee asked, "Do you have something similar to protect your campsites?"

  "I am not even sure that I know what this is exactly," the boy replied. "What is that box? Does it hold magic?"

  An uncertain look crossed the girl's face at his questions before she responded, "It is a fraction of the power that the Ciemnosci can pull using time magic. Contained to one of the Tempus Chambers, even one as small as this, it can run a prolonged spell indefinitely."

  "Not indefinitely," Helios countered. "If that was true, they wouldn't have to keep scavenging more power from other worlds."

  Alec looked at the dragon man thinking the words used should sound bitter, but the tone had been matter of fact as Helios had said them.

  "They have managed to restrict the damage to most worlds. Like pruning a tree, their magic will grow back just as strong or greater," Shaelamee responded as the girl rooted through her pack. A blanket made of similar material to what she wore was shaken out and spread across the ground. It was a little longer than the genasi was tall and wider by about double. If she was cold tonight, Alec presumed that she could just roll into the blanket leaving half under her at the same time.

  Blue, dragon eyes stared at Shaelamee long enough that the genasi must have felt the intensity of the look. She met Helios' eyes and he answered, "If you believe that, the Ciemnosci have spun a better yarn than I thought."

  Glancing at the land surrounding them, she replied once more, "They haven't always been gentle or appropriate in the use of their power, I grant you; but even Atropos returns to its old strength slowly." Pausing as if in thought, the girl continued, "While I have no love for their lust for more power or for what they have done in the past, the Ciemnosci are our allies now. We can only try to temper what they do and hope that they have learned their lessons well enough to avoid killing new worlds."

  "They are barely better than locusts moving through the universe taking what they want," Helios stated with a frown before pulling back with a start. It was as if he had forgotten that he was saying it aloud. "Anyway, we are here now and still need to find out what is causing the hollows to act up. Atropos won't likely fully heal until someone figures out why they continue to appear. No other world that they have conquered has reacted in such a way.

  "I am curious as to what creates them. It is odd."

  Smiling at the dragon man, t
he blue girl tried to act like she hadn't heard his complaint. "Well, that will have to wait until tomorrow. For now, we have an evening and night to wait out until morning. Do we set a watch? There are only three of us."

  Helios nodded. "I can take the first watch. Can you handle one of them?"

  "Of course, the lake healed most of the injury. I am not an invalid or whatever."

  The dragon's eyes looked at Alec. Shaelamee must have understood without words as she replied, "And I can wake Alec for the last shift."

  Alec examined the air shield fence and asked, "Will they hold against an attack from hollows?"

  "They should," Helios answered as he began to eat. The salamanders had moved to one side of the corral while their riders held the center. "We've used them without too much trouble before, but using magic to drive them off before they can concentrate more dangerous numbers is always best."

  The boy ate a cold dinner. It was better than he might have expected for travel food, but he would have preferred to have had whatever Glint was making at the keep. While he didn't know what was equivalent to the food that he would find in Southwall, the previous night's dinner hadn't been too bad. This sandwich was tolerable, but certainly not as good as a warm meal.

  When Shaelamee started trying to get comfortable by placing her head on the pack, Alec put the remainder of his food away before trying to follow suit. It was getting a bit cold for his taste, so the human boy wrapped himself into his blanket. Closing his eyes, he did his best to get some sleep.

  He heard the genasi make some noise, but kept his eyes closed and eventually fell asleep.

  A cool hand shook Alec's shoulder. The novice wizard opened his eyes. His mind tried to catch up and refresh his memory on what was going on now.

  The blanket still held him warmly, but his shoulders were exposed enough to feel a bit cold.

  "Wake up, Alec. It is your turn to keep watch," Shaelamee's voice spoke quietly and gently.