The Ancient Lands: Warrior Quest, Search for the Ifa Scepter

by Jason McCammon

Just as Hagga told them, a boat awaited them at the river. It was a small, frail, wooden, simple boat and, from the looks of it, Bomani doubted that it would float at all. He walked toward the boat to untie it from a stake in the ground, but he was stopped suddenly with a thump. Farra looked at him curiously, and he attempted to take another step, but he was met with an invisible barrier that stopped him. He could not get within a meter of it.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Farra.

  “I don’t know, but look.” Bomani reached out toward the boat. Again it was blocked by an invisible shield. “I can’t get near the thing.” Where he touched the shield, there was a small white glow right where his hand was. “See?”

  “Wow,” Farra gasped as she reached her hand out to touch it too. She watched as any contact with her hand created the glow.

  “How are we supposed to use the boat if she put a shield on it?” Bomani tried as hard as he could to push his and through. The harder he pushed, the brighter the glow at the barrier. Then he grabbed his spear and tried to jabbed through the barrier which did not work either.

  “Hmmm, she said you must get to it first, but she was pointing at me. Maybe she didn’t mean we, maybe she just meant me.” She placed her staff on the barrier, and it caused a bright spark. They reached up their hands to shield themselves from the light. Farra reached out to the boat again, and this time she was able to touch it. The barrier was gone.

  “See, all it took was a little magic.” Farra boasted with a cheerful grin. “She probably keeps a spell on it to keep thieves away.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Bomani replied. He untied the boat from the stake. “Come on, get in. I’ll push it. Let’s see if this thing can even float.”

  Bomani tossed his weapons and pouch inside, and then Farra and Pupa climbed into the boat. With a big push from Bomani, the boat slid into the water. He was up to his waist in the river before he tried to jump in, but when he lifted his leg, he realized that it was stuck. He tugged and pulled, but something held him firmly.

  It was a river- worm. Its body resembled that of a turtle, with a hard shell. Its feet bore claws with three-inch nails that it used to borrow into the sand or mud in the side of the riverbed. Its five-foot long tongue stretched out into the water, just waiting for an unsuspecting meal to get caught as it floated down stream.

  The tongue was as strong as any python of equivalent size. The underside was equipped with hundreds of tiny hooked teeth serving as anchors once the tongue was wrapped around its prey. In this case, Bomani was the prey.

  The river-worm yanked Bomani into the shallow water. Instinctively, he held his breath and part of him wanted to panic. The other part of him, the warrior part, the part that kept him disciplined and focused, told him that if he panicked he would die. He took no more than a second to gather himself and then went to work on getting this thing off of his leg.

  He managed to get his head above water for a breath of air before he was pulled under again. He struggled as he fought the strength of the tongue. It seemed that the more he pulled at it, the more it hurt – Its teeth pulled at every nerve ending under his skin. Fighting the pain, he managed to get part of it off of him for a moment, and then it once again wrapped its tongue around him.

  Bomani could never have pulled all five feet of the tongue off of him, and with each struggle, the stinging pain increased. He changed tactics and began pulling at the other end, toward the body of the thing. Tugging on the tongue, he pulled himself to the side of the riverbed, where the creature had its body anchored in the sand. He pulled with all of his might until the turtle-like body was dragged out. Then he stood on the hard shell and yanked harder than ever on the tongue until he had ripped it completely from its body. The animal let out a shriek of pain and ran off.

  Bomani dragged himself to the side of the river where he began to remove the limp, lifeless tongue off of his leg. The hundreds of teeth still pierced every nerve. He could not help but to scream out.

  “Bomani! Are you okay?” Farra had just managed to paddle the boat to the side of the river and ran to his aid.

  “Nice of you to show up and help. Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I was in the boat. What happened to you?”

  Bomani picked up the long slug-like tongue lying on the ground. “I don’t know, but this is part of it.”

  “Eww, pretty nasty.”

  “Yeah, the rest of it ran away.” He stood up only to feel a sharp pain throbbing through his leg. He tried to ignore it, but when he tried to step forward, the pain only increased. He fell forward. Farra quickly caught him.

  “I’m fine,” he claimed.

  “But your leg, and your arm, look at it, it’s all bloody and nasty and yucky and…” Farra turned away, her attention caught by the sound of Pupa yelping from downstream. The current had pulled the boat back in the water with Pupa still inside.

  “The boat!” Farra yelled. “Pupa!”

  She ran along the riverside, trying to catch up with Pupa and the boat. Bomani followed as far as he could, in spite of the pain of his injured limbs. When she ran far enough, Farra dove into the water, totally unaware that she had tossed her staff in the process. Without contact from its owner, the crystal that hovered at the top of the staff sank down until it was in contact with the shaft below it.

  Excited to see her, Pupa leaned over the side of the boat as if he was going to jump in. “No Pupa, stay in the boat,” Farra yelled between desperate gasps for breath.

  Farra made it to the boat and hauled herself in. She only took a moment to relax before she grabbed one of the oars and paddled her way toward Bomani, at the edge of the river. Once there, an exhausted Farra and Bomani pulled the boat onto the shore.

  “I can’t!” Bomani exclaimed. He was still hurt, but angrier with himself for not being able to deal with the pain.

  Farra continued to pull the boat several feet from the edge of the river before she collapsed. Finally, they both lay on the ground with heaving chests and muscles that seemed too tired to move. Farra closed her eyes for a few moments until she realized her staff was missing.

  “Oh, my goodness! We have to go back.” Farra yelled.

  “What? Go back? Why? Look at my leg.”

  “My staff, I threw it down to swim to the boat.”

  “It’s your fault the boat got away in the first place! Now you say we have to go back for it?”

  “I was coming to help YOU!” Farra reminded him.

  “I didn’t need your help, I took care of it on my own. I didn’t ask you to leave the boat. You’d think a good sorceress would be careful to keep up with something as important as her staff.”

  “Of course you didn’t ask for my help, I wasn’t going to wait for an invitation. When I see someone in need, I help. At least that is the way of the Anifem.”

  “Fine then, you can fetch it. But, don’t expect me to go with you. I’ll wait here by boat.” Farra noticed Bomani still favoring his leg and the nasty wound on it.

  “My goodness,” she said. She pulled the bandages that Hagga had given them from her pouch. “I forgot all about these. Remember, Hagga gave them to us? She said it was for that nasty wound on your leg, and your arm. She knew this was going to happen. Here, use them.”

  She did not wait for Bomani to accept the bandages. By the time she finished her rendition of Hagga’s prophecy, she had already knelt down to dress the wound on his leg with the black bandages that Hagga had given them.

  “I can do it,” Bomani affirmed. He reached down to take over her work on his leg, but Farra stopped him. “You’re ridiculous. Are you going to wrap your own arm too, with one hand? Don’t be silly! I can see right through you Bomani. It’s your pride that gets hurt more than anything. Why don’t you work on that, and I’ll put the bandages on.”

  Bomani tightened his face, but said nothing. He winced in pain as she continued to dress his wound with Hagga
’s black bandages, but to his surprise, the pain only lasted for a second. Very quickly he felt the wound healing.

  It was the most soothing sensation he had ever felt. The wound on his leg stretched from his ankle to the middle of his thigh, and as Farra wrapped the bandages upward he felt every inch of their healing; like a burn soothed by healing waters.

  “Wow,” he said, “Where did she say she got these from?”

  “I don’t know,” Farra replied. “She just said they were old. Now, give your arm.” She started wrapping his arm, wrapping the binding from his wrist, going around and around in both directions all the way up past his elbow.

  “Does that feel better?”

  Bomani moved his arm around and stood up, putting a little pressure on his leg. “Yes, it actually does. A lot better,” he rhythmically jumped from one leg to the other. “You stayed to help me, instead of looking for your staff?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a nasty wound. It needed some attention.”

  “All right, we’d better go find your staff then.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to help me find it?” Farra sarcastically reminded him of his earlier declaration.

  “I changed my mind, okay?” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Farra responded. She smiled at him, warmly. “We don’t need to look for it anymore”

  “What do you mean? I thought you needed it?”

  “Oh yes, definitely. We just don’t need to look for it. It’s already here.”

  She walked over to the riverbank as the current was bringing the staff her way. It floated on the water toward them, as if guided by a magical force.

  “It’s like something my mother told me,” said Farra.

  “What’s that?”

  “A staff is bound to its owner. Should they be separated, it will find its way back.” She reached into the water and grabbed it. The crystal once again began to hover, coinciding with the reunion between sorcerer and staff.

  “Humph. It didn’t find its way back. You just got lucky. Besides, it’s made of wood, so it floated down stream.”

  Farra smiled, “Oh, you wouldn’t understand, but it’s true.”

  Chapter 9

  ROUND ONE