Prophet of Moonshae tdt-1

by Douglas Niles

  Yet the stump could not be seen. Where it should have been, another great cedar grew into the sky, nearly equalling the others in its lofty height.

  "I swear, Sir Gwyeth!" Backar was nearly blubbering in confusion and chagrin. "There! Where that tree grows! Two days ago we left it a ragged stump!"

  "Never mind!" snapped the knight, angrily scowling at the assembled peasants. "It's no more than I would have expected from this bespooked place. It makes it more important than ever to have done with the curse!"

  Pryat Wentfeld had also dismounted. Quietly he performed another casting with the pinch of flour, the same he had used to examine the hallucinatory forest. This time the white powder flew away from him, dusting into the crowd of pilgrims to settle across the garments of one man-a man, the cleric noted, who seemed remarkably young and, though thin, possessed of a wiry strength that belied his appearance when compared to the ragged lot around him.

  "There!" hissed the priest, pointing at the marked man, who had begun to sidle away. " That is your druid!"

  "Seize him!" cried Gwyeth, who would have chased the varlet himself, except that his heavy plate mail practically immobilized him. "Bring him to me!"

  The thin bearded man identified by the cleric turned and sprinted away, but a dozen men-at-arms, led by Backar, quickly overhauled and tackled him. They dragged him back to Gwyeth as they bound his hands behind his back.

  "So you're the charlatan who pretends to practice the arts of druidhood!" the knight said, sneering. The man remained silent. Looking more closely, Gwyeth saw a hard determination in the druid's green eyes. His insolence annoyed the knight, who cuffed the prisoner across the face.

  "The goddess shall prevail," hissed the druid, spitting out a broken tooth. "It's too late for you to stop her!"

  "Silence, knave!" Gwyeth slapped him again before he could speak more of his treasonous drivel. The knight saw that already some of the more superstitious men looked at the prisoner with expressions of wonder, even awe. He knew he had to put a stop to this, and he drew his dagger, ready to slit the man's throat without further ceremony.

  "My lord," said the cleric, anticipating his act. "Perhaps the deed would be better done with formality-an example lest anyone else presume to impersonate a member of that forgotten order."

  "What do you suggest?" Clenching his dagger, Gwyeth held his blow long enough to listen.

  "You say you shall burn the brush after you fell the trees. Why not affix yon charlatan to a stake in the midst of that fire? Such a death would be only suitable for this murderer, and the spectacle would also make a far better tale than to hear of him slain by your dagger while bound before you."

  The image of the druid burning at the stake flamed in Gwyeth's imagination. The cleric was right.

  "Very well. Detail six men to guard him," he told Backar. "Bind his feet and gag his mouth as well. He shall die by fire before this day is out."

  Quickly he instructed fifty of his men to scatter the crowd of pilgrims who had sullenly watched this proceeding. The men-at-arms went about their task with relish, using clubs and the flats of their swords. The last of the ragged onlookers soon fled for the safety of the high rocks around the vale, where they looked down with unconcealed dismay.

  The rest of Gwyeth's men hefted axes even before the pilgrims had been driven away. They started toward the grove of cedars, and soon the ringing of twoscore axemen sounded a cadence of death in the valley of the Moonwell.

  Orange flames crackled upward from the weatherbeaten barn. The pyre marked the destruction of a season's precious straw and grain and the livestock that would have survived on the fodder. The farmer and his family had been butchered in the yard as the five pitiful figures had tried to defend their home from twenty-five mounted, armored knights.

  "Valiant but stupid," Larth announced as his own black charger reared back, kicking anxiously at the flames. With the remark, the brigand dismissed the lives and deaths and all the hopes and aspirations of his victims. It was a mental tactic he had begun to use with increasing frequency as his reign of terror swept along the coast of Gnarhelm.

  The thickset knight preferred not to remember the details of faces and forms that marked the bodies in his wake. By all measures except the nagging voice of his conscience, the mission had been exceptionally successful. He had lost only five of his riders, and the survivors had claimed enough treasure to make them all rich men.

  The losses had come during a skirmish with hundreds of northern axemen, led by the King of Olafstaad. The armored knights, all mounted, fought the northmen on a grassy moor, and the horses had inflicted horrible losses on the footmen.

  Larth's charger reared back suddenly, and the knight gaped in astonishment at the man who had abruptly materialized there.

  "You!" he gulped, steadying his prancing mount.

  "You have served me well," said the hooded priest. "Now I bring further instructions."

  "I remain yours to command," Larth pledged as cold terror gripped his gut.

  "You must ride with all haste into the Fairheight Mountains, to the Moonwell near Cantrev Blackstone."

  "Why?" the knight had the audacity to ask.

  "This entire island will explode in chaos if we can but maintain the pressure. Talos and his faithful will be richly rewarded! But there is a threat to his might found in this Moonwell. I need you there. My auguries show me that there is where the issue will be decided!"

  "We ride with all haste," promised the warrior as his men gathered silently around them. The burning farm hissed as rain fell into the flames, but the dried wood crackled and burned as hot as ever.

  "See that you make no delay," the cleric commanded. "I need you there in two days." As quickly as he had appeared, the robed figure vanished.

  Larth and his warriors disappeared as well, swallowed by the dark, wet night as they rode away from the fire.

  Danrak watched the preparations of Gwyeth's men in mute despair. His arms ached, bent as they were around the stake driven into the ground behind him. The dirty gag nearly choked him, but the cleric had ordered his eyes unmasked, doubtlessly so that the helpless druid could observe the destruction being wrought on the valley of the Moonwell.

  Eight men stood near Danrak with swords drawn. They were taut as bowstrings, as if they expected him at any moment to turn into a viper and slither away. Now he was as helpless as any prisoner could be. He watched as cedar after towering cedar slowly gave way to the axes, each seeming to shriek in protest as it toppled in doomed majesty, then slammed into the ground with earthshaking force.

  Other men hacked with their swords-they had neglected to bring sickles-at the berry bushes and the roses and other flowers that had blossomed throughout the vale. The brush they piled around Danrak, and the druid felt a bitter irony as the fragrance of the aromatic buds wafted around him, marking the impotence of his last moments on earth.

  After a few hours of work, the once beautiful place already resembled a wasteland. The men cleared the near shore of the well first, and then slowly began to work their way around the pond. They reached the halfway point on either side, and the circle of destruction slowly started to close.

  Danrak wanted to close his eyes, to shut out the images of disaster, but his mind compelled him to watch. Despair grew to a raging storm within him, but he could do nothing.

  A sudden sound pulled his head around. He saw a flash of blue and thought at first that a bluebird had flickered past, further mockery of his plight. Then he saw the movement again and realized that it was larger than a bluebird, though the thing now fluttered before him on wings as faerielike as any butterfly's.

  The watchmen beside the druid stumbled backward, shouting in alarm. The strange creature, who looked something like a flying lizard with a wide, toothy grin, seemed to smile at Danrak.

  "Hi," said the serpent. "I'm Newt. What are you doing tied to that pole?" Danrak gaped in astonishment, but before he could make a sound, the creature had disappeared.

 
; The night lay thick across the isles, but nowhere was the cloak of darkness more dense than over Caer Callidyrr itself. Here the High Queen Robyn slumbered in her unknowing, deathlike trance, bound by the power of chaotic Talos. And here the Princess Deirdre awaited the summons to the greatest challenge of her young life.

  She lay awake, tossing on her bed, until finally she rose and went to her high window. Casting open the shutters, she looked across a world of ultimate, desolate blackness. The aperture faced away from the town, so she saw only the occasional torches of watchmen or hearthfires glowing in some distant herdsmen's huts.

  The sky above remained thick and impenetrable, clouds masking the moon, which, unknown to her, rose before sunset, only a day away from the fullness of its cycle.

  Then she felt a tremor in the air, and she stepped back from her window, catching her breath and hoping it was him! Malawar came into her room, and for the first time, he swept her into his arms. She felt a fierce, exultant joy as he kissed her.

  "Now," Malawar murmured, his voice a soft music in Deirdre's ear. "The oath. It is time for you to pledge."

  "The oath to Talos," she replied, softly and unsurprised. "I could feel that the time was coming. The power has been growing rapidly within me. Day by day I feel its intensification."

  "Good-very good."

  Malawar's smile was dazzling, and his hair gleamed like spun gold as he removed a wax figure from a pouch of his voluminous robe. From another place, he pulled a small, tightly rolled parchment.

  He touched a finger to the wax figure, which bore a crude resemblance to a maiden-it might have been Deirdre. The image burst into flame, and he unrolled the scroll and gave it to the princess to hold.

  "Read the words," he instructed, "while holding it over the flame. As the fire consumes the vellum, the power of Talos shall flow into your veins."

  The sigils on the sheet were strange to Deirdre, but as she stared at them, the fire making the material glow in her hands, they began to form themselves into sounds. They were strange noises, things not intended to issue from any human throat, but somehow they came to her naturally, brimming with a deep, guttural joy. As she made the sounds, the vellum grew hotter and hotter in her hands. When she reached the final sound, the sheet popped brightly, disappearing except for a trace of perfumed smoke that hovered in the air between her hands. The wax figure, she saw, had burned to a pool.

  For a moment, time froze. The princess felt a heightened awareness, as if she could feel the blood pulsing in her veins, the guards patrolling the castle walls beyond-even the moisture, slowing gathering into rain, that lurked in the clouds overhead. She saw Malawar's smile, and her joy expanded to impossible heights.

  Deirdre barely noticed when Malawar picked her up and carried her to the bed.

  "What purpose do you take me to, Warlock?" asked Hanrald, wishing that the great hound could talk. The powerful animal had always led the Blackstone pack, and even now, among the fifty or so dogs that escorted Hanrald, he stood out as alert, quick, and cautious. For the most part, the moorhound led his pack across the highland plateau at an amble, tongue lolling, gait steady. The knight had labored to keep up for all of this long day.

  Suddenly Hanrald paused and held up his hand. As if sensing his purpose, the moorhounds stopped panting so that they, too, could listen.

  "Chopping-that's the sound of someone chopping wood!" declared the knight, delighted with the discovery. "That means there's people up there-people with food and drink and perhaps a horse that could get me back to Blackstone!" He started forward at a lumbering trot.

  But as he came to the high bluff that overlooked the activity, he realized that he was wrong. He recognized the place immediately as the Blackstone Moonwell, and for the first time in days, he knew where he was. He remembered all the details of the miracle Alicia had described and knew that Gwyeth had done his work well.

  Hanrald saw a man tied to a great stake driven into the earth. The brush and tree limbs stacked about his feet left no doubt as to his sentence.

  Beside him, Warlock growled, his hackles raised, and suddenly Hanrald's task gleamed in front of the knight like a holy beacon: The hounds had brought him here so that he could stop this desecration.

  Ignoring caution, Hanrald started to pick his way down the steep slope leading toward the pond. He saw a great stack of cedar trunks and the stumps where they had grown only hours before.

  Alicia! In his mind, he pictured her, and he knew that she had performed a miracle here. Hanrald vowed his life to the preservation of that miracle, and he would fight in the name of his princess.

  The knight saw the pilgrims who had been driven from the well. They squatted here, high on the rocky slope, and studied Hanrald with mute suspicion. Soon the clanking noise of his passage-he still wore his plate mail, though he had discarded his helmet-attracted the attention of the men in the valley. Some of them gathered in a semicircle to greet him as he reached the bottom of the bluff, though they regarded him suspiciously, with upraised axes. A circle of hounds gathered around the knight, growling and holding the men-at-arms away.

  A helmeted warrior, clad in armor similar to Hanrald's, approached. Hanrald recognized his brother Gwyeth.

  "What are you doing here?" demanded the latter as his men opened their ring to their leader. Gwyeth stopped twenty feet from Hanrald and scowled through his opened visor, planting his hands firmly on his hips.

  "I come to send you away," Hanrald retorted, "and to let nature take the course that she will."

  Gwyeth laughed sharply. "You would disobey our father?"

  "Only because he-and you-show treason to our king!"

  The older man glowered even more darkly. The men-at-arms looked among themselves-treason to the High Crown was not something lightly contemplated or loosely charged.

  "It's fit that we find you in the company of curs. You're a lying dog and a disgrace to the family!" snarled Gwyeth, his hands on the hilt of his broadsword.

  "A family I would as soon be rid of," retorted Hanrald, his voice calm but his own hands ready to loose his weapon. "For it has lost all sense of honor in its undying quest for gold!"

  Warlock growled and stepped before the knight, but Hanrald called him back. "This battle is mine, friend."

  Gwyeth, however, stared at the dog. "That's Warlock!" he exclaimed. "The dog who fled the manor on the night of Currag's death! And these others-all the hounds of Blackstone!"

  "Aye, Brother, and they are here because of the offense you give to the earth!"

  "Enough!" Gwyeth's rage took hold of him, and his sword burst from its scabbard to gleam in his hands. "Steel can silence your treasonous tongue."

  Hanrald barely had time to draw his own weapon and meet his brother's assault with a clash of sharp steel. The two knights bashed at each other again, then circled warily. Once more they closed in, exchanging blows from the right and left, high and low, but each time one sword met the other, and the ringing notes of the conflict echoed through the vale.

  Some of the men-at-arms fidgeted with their own weapons, as if they would help their lord, but they found themselves confronted by slavering hounds, baring white fangs and standing in stiff-backed, bristling readiness.

  The two knights chopped and parried, asking and giving no quarter. Their blades cut silvery arcs through the air, and the momentum of their attacks slowly carried them down the gentle slope toward the shore of the pool. The man tied to the stake watched them impassively, as did the ragged pilgrims around the fringe of the vale, while the men-at-arms stayed well back from the menacing hounds.

  One man, however, did more than watch. Unseen by either of the combatants, Pryat Wentfeld, devout cleric of Helm, slowly withdrew something from his pouch. Carefully, surreptitiously, he prepared to cast a spell.

  Musings of the Harpist

  She is here, and alive, though just barely. I have seen an essence in my dreams these past nights, and I curse my old brain that it did not understand more quickly. But now I
am certain.

  The Earthmother has returned. A glimmering of her might was born in the Fairheight Moonwell, and now that fragment struggles for life, as a sapling struggles to raise its leaves to the sun.

  She has floated through a long night, and her awakening is not yet assured. It remains to us to give her that chance.

  18

  A Focus of Might

  As usual, dawn was an obscure moment in the dark, gray hours of early morning, yet Deirdre sensed it was just at that moment she awakened. She knew that somewhere, above the leaden clouds and beyond the icy, stinging rain, the sun had just crested the eastern horizon. Languorously she stretched, the events of the previous night coming back to her bit by exhilarating bit.

  The oath of worship! The memory of that experience awed and moved her as much as had the ceremony itself. Now, as she met her first day following that pledging, she felt as though she had moved in a few hours from a child to some stage far beyond adulthood. The power pulsing within her animated Deirdre's body, compelling her to full alertness, tingling her nerves with suppressed tension.

  And the oath had only been the first part, for then there had been Malawar. He had taken her to her bed, and for the first time, he had remained with her through the night.

  She sat up in the bed and looked at the form beside her, covered by the heavy quilt. A smile played with her lips as she recalled the forbidden delight, the glorious culmination of their love. Now he still slumbered, and she cherished her private moment of joy.

  Gently, tenderly, she reached out and pulled the coverlet away, longing for just a glimpse of his straw-colored hair, his fine-chiseled features. The quilt flipped away-and Deirdre gagged in shock.

  Biting back her scream of terror, she threw herself from the bed, pulling the covers with her and wrapping them around her nakedness as she backed toward a corner of the room. The thing that had lain beside her stirred and then sat up-slowly, and stiffly, as befitted the wrinkled figure, withered and wizened with age.