The Druid's Guise: The Complete Trilogy (The Druid's Guise Trilogy)

by Michael J Sanford

  “I’ve never been here. I only see it in my dreams. And dreams are funny and fuzzy.”

  “Well, that’s no help,” Wyatt said shortly.

  “Hey, I didn’t make this happen,” Lucy shouted. “This is your fault!”

  Wyatt thought to respond in a similar manner, directing the blame back at her. Lucy had made the world, after all, so as far as Wyatt was concerned, it was all her fault. Luckily, Ms. Abagail interjected before he could. “Hey, I will not have you two arguing about this. You’re brother and sister, for God’s sake. And whatever is going on, and wherever we are, and whatever is going to happen, is more important than pointing fingers. I still can’t believe any of this is real, but if it is—”

  “It is!” Wyatt and Lucy said at once. They looked at each other and smiled.

  Ms. Abagail sighed. “What matters is sticking together and not fighting each other. I think we have enough enemies.”

  “But siblings are supposed to fight,” Wyatt protested with a grin.

  “You two may be siblings, but you are by no means normal siblings. So, put a lid on the blaming and let’s focus on what we’re doing here,” Ms. Abagail said, once more seeming like the well-intentioned staff member of The Shepherd’s Crook.

  “Yes, Ms. Abagail,” Wyatt said, layering on the sarcasm as thickly as possible.

  Ms. Abagail pushed his shoulder. “I’m serious.”

  Lucy pushed Ms. Abagail and skipped a step to walk in front of her and next to Wyatt. “Hey, don’t push my brother,” she said with mock malice.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt agreed. “We’re a team.”

  He heard Ms. Abagail sigh loudly as he and Lucy ran the rest of the way up the steps.

  Chapter Three

  “OH, WOW,” MS. Abagail said airily as she came to lean against the same stone railing that Wyatt and Lucy were glued to.

  “Uh huh,” was all Wyatt could manage to reply.

  At the top of the spiral staircase that had seemed to go on forever was a large circular room with a high domed ceiling of painted glass. There were no walls, only intricately carved columns of stone that served as a boundary between the room and three hundred and sixty degrees of balcony.

  “Oh, wow,” Ms. Abagail said again. “You can see for miles. Hundreds of miles, maybe. Oh, wow.”

  From what Wyatt could tell, they were standing in the highest tower of a ruggedly beautiful castle that seemed to grow out of a mountain. Jagged stone and snow-capped peaks stretched to the horizon on one side of the Observatory, while a never-ending field of snow sloped away from Sanctuary on the opposite side.

  The sun hung low in the sky and transformed the snow into a kaleidoscope of purple tinged with bits of pink and crimson. The wind at his face was stiff and frigid, but otherworldly warmth beat at his back, and the sight was so spectacular that the cold was a distant thought.

  “Breathtaking, is it not?” asked a voice from behind Wyatt.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes away, and, in his periphery, could see that Lucy and Ms. Abagail were frozen in place as well.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Ms. Abagail said. “I don’t believe any of this.”

  The mustachioed man came to stand at Wyatt’s side. Other men and women stood at his back, though they remained silent for the time being. “You don’t believe?” the man questioned with a laugh. “It is you three that fell through a hole in the ceiling that is now no longer there, crushed a perfectly good dinner, and brought three of our sworn foes into our midst. None of those things should be possible. Sanctuary is a place that none except those who expressly need to know of. And yet here you are: three young humans that look to have seen a war and only just escaped with their lives. It is Sanctuary that should not believe you.”

  Wyatt finally turned from the frozen landscape and looked down at his garb. He laughed at the torn and dirtied hospital gown that was once soaked with the rain of a magical storm and was now frozen solid. It cracked as he moved, and he laughed again.

  “This is all amusing to you?” the man inquired.

  Wyatt looked up and wiped a tear from his eye before it could freeze. Ms. Abagail and Lucy turned from the railing and pressed in close to him. There looked to be a dozen men and women crowded around the trio. None were smiling.

  Wyatt looked at Ms. Abagail as she grabbed her hair, found it frozen, and frowned. Lucy made a funny face and sneezed, expelling two strands of phlegm that hung from her nostrils. Wyatt and Ms. Abagail looked at the slight girl in frozen pajamas, with lines of quickly freezing snot hanging nearly to her lips, and broke into matching fits of laughter.

  The men and women surrounding them waited in stunned silence until Wyatt, Lucy, and Ms. Abagail collected themselves enough to stand without trembling and slowed their breathing enough to speak once more.

  “I’m sorry,” Ms. Abagail said. “This is…this is…it’s all just so ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous, indeed,” the mustachioed man responded curtly, arms folded across his thick chest. “Nevertheless, if you have quite calmed yourselves, we still have the matter of your strange arrival to discuss. It is, as you so eloquently phrased it, ridiculous.”

  Ms. Abagail straightened up and elbowed Wyatt to do the same while she pulled on Lucy’s arm as well.

  “Very well,” the man said after a moment. “Please, sit.” The crowd parted as he gestured at a circular table in the middle of the space. There was a hole at its center, from which a tall metal rose protruded. The elegant metalwork reached nearly to the glass ceiling, its petals spread as wide as the table beneath it. Wyatt craned his neck in wonder, having missed it when he first entered the Observatory.

  The men and women spread out to each take a seat around the table, and Wyatt noticed that they were not all adults. Four of them were certainly children, two roughly Lucy’s age, while the other two were closer to Wyatt’s. And there were a few gray-haired elders as well. As Wyatt sat next to Ms. Abagail, as she sat next to Lucy, he realized that the group of humans seemed to represent every age range, and both genders.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ms. Abagail said of the towering metal rose.

  “Very pretty,” Lucy agreed.

  “It is more than mere beauty,” the mustachioed man said with a smile. “Conrad, if you would.”

  The boy of Lucy’s age hopped up, climbed onto the table and walked to the rose. He poked the stem and immediately the open room atop Sanctuary swelled with heat and light. Flames erupted from the rose petals with a woosh. After the briefest of moments, it settled, but continued to brightly burn.

  Wyatt shuddered under the dramatic change in temperature. Lucy clapped her hands and Ms. Abagail said, “Oh, wow.”

  Conrad hurried back to his seat and sat as if he’d done nothing special. A dozen more nonplussed faces inspected the newcomers.

  “Neat trick,” Wyatt said. “And I thought I was the only one with magic—” He cut off his own words when he realized what he was saying. He may have once commanded magnificent magical power, but that had been before he had given away his amulet to the Bad Man.

  “I am Benjamin Light,” the mustachioed man said, ignoring Wyatt’s fractured assertion. He looked at Ms. Abagail expectantly.

  The young woman with the stripe of pink in her dark hair looked around, clearly at a loss for words. “That’s Ms. Abagail,” Wyatt said. “I’m Wyatt, and the short one is my sister, Lucy.”

  “Hey,” Lucy quickly retorted. “I’m not short.”

  “Sure, you are,” Wyatt said. “Shorter than me, anyway.”

  “Good things come in small packages,” Lucy said, leaning around Ms. Abagail to glare at Wyatt.

  Wyatt shrugged. “I never said it was a bad thing. It’s just a fact.”

  “Well, it’s also a fact that all of this is your fault.”

  Wyatt opened his mouth to fire back, but shut it again. She was right, after all. Of all Wyatt’s mistakes, giving away his magic and seemingly destabilizing two worlds was the most grievou
s.

  “Knock it off,” Ms. Abagail hissed between clenched teeth, having collected herself. “Both of you.”

  “Sorry,” Lucy said.

  Wyatt just frowned, too preoccupied with self-loathing to render a response.

  “Please, forgive us,” Ms. Abagail said. “We’ve had quite a night.”

  “So, it would seem,” Benjamin said. “But we must discuss this matter. While you may find it amusing, we do not. Nothing that has occurred tonight, as it relates to the three of you, is ordinary.”

  “Sorry,” Ms. Abagail repeated.

  Wyatt raised his hand. “It’s my fault, Ben.”

  “Benjamin.”

  “Whatever,” Wyatt said. “Anyway, I should probably be the one to explain.”

  Benjamin narrowed his eyes, but nodded.

  Wyatt looked around the table, found he had everyone’s undivided attention, took a deep breath, and began to explain as best as he could the nature of their arrival. He stumbled his way through his tale, trying to keep to the highlights of the story. Surprisingly, he found it refreshing. And though he dreaded the moment of admission as related to the Bad Man, once he said the words, he felt lighter.

  “…and so here we are,” he concluded.

  “Told you it was his fault,” Lucy said smugly.

  Benjamin Light pulled on the edges of his mustache and leaned back in his chair. The rest of the Representatives shared silent looks.

  “You’re Druids, then?” Benjamin asked at last.

  “Yes…w-well, n-no. I-I mean, I was. Not anymore,” Wyatt stammered. “And you see, that’s the problem. I think.”

  “Lucy still is, right?” Ms. Abagail asked.

  Wyatt looked at her, stunned. “I…never thought of that. I guess. Well, she’s the Mother. I think.”

  Benjamin laughed at that, and it rippled around the table until it terminated at Lucy and Wyatt.

  “Hey, it’s true,” Wyatt protested, silencing the merriment.

  “Yeah,” Lucy added.

  Benjamin looked at Lucy. “Young child, you claim to be the Mother?”

  Lucy looked down at her lap and fidgeted with her shirt. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You still have your amulet,” Wyatt said. “Show ‘em.”

  Lucy perked up at that. “Oh yeah.” She stood up and withdrew an identical pendant to the one Wyatt had given up. A green gem set into a fist of dark driftwood swung from a hempen string. Instead of laughter, gasps ran along the table’s border.

  “Your story…is true…” Benjamin said slowly. Wyatt couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question.

  “Crazy as it sounds, it is,” Ms. Abagail said. “And trust me, I’m still getting used to it, too. I’m not a Druid, by the way.”

  Still holding up her Druids’ seed, Lucy looked at Wyatt. “What now?” she whispered from the side of her mouth.

  Wyatt didn’t have a response, but he didn’t need one, either. The small green gem swinging from Lucy’s hand flared to life, turning every wide-eyed face into a mask of vibrant green. Lucy squeaked and let go of the string, but the gem stayed where it was, suspended by an unseen hand and glowing for the world to see.

  Wyatt expected a shower of sparks to erupt from the gem. He expected the magic seeds to take root and sprout ethereal vines bent on transporting whomever they touched to a different place and time. It was, after all, how his amulet had behaved.

  No sparks came to life, nor did anyone vanish from the tower room. Instead, the light winked out and the gem fell against Lucy’s chest. Silence fell with it, but it didn’t last. A rumble of distant thunder washed over the stunned onlookers.

  Wyatt, Lucy, and Ms. Abagail, looked at each other. “Uh oh,” Wyatt said. Lucy looked close to tears. “But I’m still awake,” she said.

  Wyatt slowly stood and calmly walked toward the balcony. He heard everyone else do the same, but didn’t turn his gaze from the snowy landscape.

  “What’s going on?” Benjamin’s voice called from behind Wyatt. “What are you looking at?”

  Another roll of thunder sounded from the sky, louder than before. “Thunder never travels alone,” Wyatt said.

  Ms. Abagail and Lucy flanked him at the railing. “I don’t suppose you know what’s going on?” Ms. Abagail asked.

  Again, the need for a response was rendered moot as a bright bolt of lightning lit up the world, cutting a perfect vertical stripe between the heavens and the snowy valley. The resulting thunder sounded like a bomb detonating, but even that was a distant nuisance to what now occupied the valley.

  “Oh my God,” Ms. Abagail said, clasping a hand to her mouth.

  “Did I do that?” Lucy asked, grabbing hold of Wyatt’s hand.

  “What in the Realms is that?” Benjamin bellowed.

  Wyatt still couldn’t move, his eyes rooted in place more than ever, listening to the distant hum of engines and watching the steady stream of headlights. “Well, from where we’re from, that’s called a highway.”

  * * *

  “What wickedness have you brought upon us?” someone shouted after what seemed an eternity of silence.

  The protest echoed among the rest of the Representatives. Before, they had seen fit to hold their tongues, allowing Benjamin to speak for them, but now they all spoke at once.

  Below, cutting through the valley of snow, the busy highway hummed with the sound of engines, followed by screeching tires and the crunch of metal on metal. Wyatt watched in horror as chaos erupted on the foreign stretch of pavement and in the small room behind him.

  “Oh my God,” Ms. Abagail said again, showing her propensity to repeat herself when under duress.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Wyatt found himself saying.

  Lucy crouched next to Wyatt and covered her ears. Just as she did, a streak of lightning ripped through the darkening heavens and struck a snowcapped peak. Stone and snow crumbled, sliding down the slope with increasing velocity.

  Most of the Representatives fell to the stone floor, mimicking Lucy’s position, but Benjamin remained upright. The solidly built man pushed his way toward Wyatt and grabbed him by the shoulders. “What are you doing?” he bellowed over the growing storm.

  A sharp wind wrapped itself around the Observatory, biting with frosted fangs. Wyatt stared defiantly back at Benjamin. “Everything I told you before was true.”

  “You must stop this madness,” Benjamin roared back, not giving an inch.

  “I can’t,” Wyatt said, pushing Benjamin in the chest. The man let him go, but stayed where he was. “Lucy,” Wyatt called, turning and crouching in front of his sister.

  Lucy had her chin tucked to her chest, eyes pinched shut, hands pressed so tightly against the side of her head that they were white. Ms. Abagail knelt at Wyatt’s side. “We need to stop this,” she said with a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder.

  “I can’t,” Wyatt repeated. “I think only she can.”

  Ms. Abagail looked at Lucy and put her free hand on the small girl’s back. “Lucy?” she asked cautiously.

  Wyatt could hear the roar of the avalanche and wondered how many people along the highway would be buried by snow and stone. He shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t right for those of Earth to be punished because of his actions. Ms. Abagail was right about that.

  He put his hands over Lucy’s and gently forced her to look at him. She squinted against the swirling wind, her eyes bloodshot. “Lucy, can you...”

  “I’m trying,” Lucy said weakly. “But I can feel him.”

  Wyatt’s breath caught for a moment. “The Bad Man?”

  Lucy nodded. “He’s here. I can feel him. Following.”

  Wyatt looked around the Observatory, ignoring the cowering men, women, and children. He looked through the swirling snow and his own frosted breath. He eyed every crevice, corner, and shadow. Lucy shook against his hands and brought his attention back to her.

  “Not here,” she said. “Out there. But he’s close. He knows where we are. And he�
��s coming.”

  “Forget the Bad Man,” Ms. Abagail said, leaning close. “Can you stop…whatever this is? Stop the worlds from mixing?”

  Lucy looked at Ms. Abagail and then at Wyatt. She nodded. “I think so.”

  “Then do it,” Ms. Abagail said.

  Lucy looked expectantly at Wyatt. He nodded.

  “Okay,” Lucy said. She bowed her head again and scrunched up her face.

  Wyatt looked at Ms. Abagail and found her staring back. “This is bad, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Wyatt hadn’t been able to make sense of anything since giving his amulet to the Bad Man in an effort to save his own soul from sliding into darkness. But the answer to her question came at once, and he knew it to be right. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s bad. I messed up big time.”

  The floor shook beneath them, and Wyatt instinctively moved closer to both Ms. Abagail and Lucy. Ms. Abagail did the same, both her and Wyatt wrapping themselves around Lucy. The slight girl was curled upon herself, trembling under the strain of whatever magic she was attempting to conjure or control.

  “It’s working,” Benjamin shouted, still standing nearby, turned toward the valley.

  Wyatt hazarded a look over the railing and saw Benjamin was right. The avalanche of stone and stone was still growing, but the highway had vanished.

  “Keep going, Lucy,” he said as he watched the storm calm and the wind fall to a whisper.

  The avalanche met the valley floor, it too falling silent upon having completed its journey. Lucy gasped and fell against Wyatt. He caught her and wrapped his arms around her.

  “You did it,” Wyatt said.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy whispered into Wyatt’s chest.

  “Sorry for what? You fixed it. Whatever you did worked.”

  Lucy didn’t respond.

  “Well,” Benjamin said. “That was certainly…”

  Wyatt stood, helping Lucy up, and faced Benjamin. Snow coated everyone and everything within the Observatory. The Representatives gathered themselves, shaking snow off their bodies and looking at Wyatt.

  “I don’t suppose you have an explanation?” Benjamin asked.

  “I told you everything we know,” Wyatt said. “We’re from another world and it’s colliding with the Realms.”