“But this is my home. I've lost my wife and family, but at least their memory lives on here.”
“I'll not risk your life. And a day may come when you'll return.”
“Your wife and children may well yet live amongst my people,” said Neron, putting a hand on Badharan's shoulder.
“Oh! That would be beyond all I ever dared for in any of my dreams.”
“Go ready your things in haste,” said Veyfnaryr. “I'm sending Neron on his way at once.”
“Yes my thunderman,” said Badharan, choking on his words as he rose, bowed and quickly found his way out.
“So shall I have an escort of brutes to see you all to the edge of the Jutwoods?” said Veyfnaryr, rising to his feet the moment Badharan was gone.
Neron shook his head. “Have you been down to the Magic River?”
“There is a magic river? No one's so much as found a trace...”
Within the hour, Sulacha, Olloo, Obbree and Badharan set out from the library for the orchard leading their unicorns as they followed Neron, Veyfnaryr and Dyrjinyryy, well out of earshot.
“Here it is,” said Neron, speaking out in the calls of frogs as they came upon a cellar door under the high white sliver of moon.
“But in all my years growing up a-playing out here, I've never seen it before,” said Veyfnaryr.
“It's only here when you know to look for it,” said Neron, heaving open the door against the brambles. “It will be here any time you do, though Dyrjinyryy will need you along in order to see it.” He held the door as everyone caught up and stepped inside the tightly echoing passage. After several rods down the scarcely sloping grade, the dank tunnel grew light as day from the glow lichens growing on its walls, which not only awed Veyfnaryr and Dyrjinyryy but made them squint. By the time that they were quite weary from their long meander into the earth, they came to a gigantic cavern where the sparkling clear Magic River welled up massively from unimaginable depths.
“The wee boat, tied up there, is surely no use to anyone,” said Veyfnaryr. “what will you do?”
“That boat will take us anywhere we ask it, so long as it's a body of water on this side of the Great Barrier Mountains,” said Neron.
They said their farewells and stepped into the boat which grew larger before their eyes, until every Elf was seated. Neron traded nods with Veyfnaryr. “Boat, please take us to Gold Lake,” he said. And with that, the boat untied itself, quickly found the current. and vanished into the next cavern.
Chapter 190
Spitemorta pitched from side to side and at last onto her back in her tangle of sheets in the dead still night, while out her bower window the horizon silently winked and flickered. It was most unsettling to find herself struggling to keep up with a beautiful young woman everywhere she went, particularly one with great pale green moth wings who would not even bother to look at her. “People don't have wings, you little strumpet,” she said.
The woman spread wide her wings as she turned square about to face her. “Hello Mother,” she said with her radiant smile of razor teeth.
Spitemorta wheeled away in a panic and fell from the bed in the windings of her sweaty bed clothes. “Hoy!” she shrieked in her frenzy with the sheets. “Hoy! I need help! Where's my help? Hoy! Damn you!”
“Cowering in the furthest reaches of the castle with recollections of Pissant, I should think,” said Demonica, looking her up and down. “You've been teaching the help right along...”
“You stinking bug-witch!” she said, getting up onto an elbow. “My night was bad enough without sparring with the likes o' you.”
“Why I'd say! Looks like your linens already got you.”
“My linens would've got you too, if you'd had the dream I had,” she said, tramping out of her sheets and sitting on the bed with a bounce.
“A dream put you on the floor?” she scoffed. “Your handsome general roger-man must've got the chamber maid.”
“And you've been dead long enough that you're sounding like a has-been, Grandmother. Coel wasn't in it. Nasteuh was. She was grown up and had wings. How could she possibly have wings?”
“You tell me. It was your dream...”
“No! She did have wings. It was real.”
“Dreams are not real, dear, visions are. And even if you were dreaming about someone real, why would she have to be the biting daughter you resented and lost track of, those twenty years ago?”
“You think I don't know my own child? Besides, she still has the teeth of a dogfish and called me 'Mother.'“
“Well that's sweet!” said Demonica, sitting on the bed beside her. “Did she say where she's been all these years?”
“Sweet? She turned on me with her dark eyes and toothy smile, and that's what terrified me so bad that I had to flee. That's what woke me...”
“Surely it was the fall on the floor. You're not going to tell me that a piddly nightmare has you this shaken...”
“No Grandmother. It was Nasteuh and she hates me.”
“Very well. She might. Let's say your dream was indeed a vision and she not only lives, but now has wings and despises you. So what? She has neither the Great Staff nor the Crystal Heart, nor yet so much as a particle of the power you were born with. You've not one reason under the vast heavens above to fear her, even if she did manage to fly all the way here to the foot of your bed. Simply roast her at your whim, dear.”
“And green hair. Did I say that she has green hair?”
“Now that does make her dangerous,” said Demonica with a gasp as a sudden gust of wind sent the drapes curling into the room. “I don't know about your vision, dear.
Perhaps you're more timorous and feeble than I had imagined when it comes to dreams.
Fairies are long dead and gone. Just how would she come by green hair? And wings.
How would she come by those, for that matter?”
Spitemorta shot to her feet as the first thunder of the arriving storm echoed away over the countryside. “Get out!” she shrieked. “Now!”
And with that, Demonica was nowhere to be seen, her laughter fading away with the arrival of the rain.
***
The boat of any size glided far out onto the peaceful waters of Gold Lake under the same white sliver of moon that had been watching over Lake Jutland, though there were far more stars. As soon as the twinkling lights of Goldtown could be seen along the far shore, it came to a stop. “Boat,” said Neron, “please take us ashore a half mile south of town.”
“Why not the quays, I wonder?” thought Badharan, though he said nothing for fear of appearing daft, especially since, except for their departure down the Magic River, he had no recollection at all of how they came to be on Gold Lake. “It certainly wasn't by way of the Gold River.”
Presently they arrived at the shore, silencing a great chorus of baying bullfrogs.
The moment that they had all stepped out into the knee-deep water, Badharan looked back. “My word! Did we sink the boat without a sound?”
“It's already all tied up, back in the cavern under Oilean Gairdin,” said Neron as they climbed out onto the dry mud, trod into terraces by the hooves of the cattle which came to drink every day.
“We've not had a moment to talk, sire,” said Olloo. “What are we planning on doing?”
“We led our multitudes well wide of Goldtown when we fled Demonica and her trolls, twenty year ago,” said Neron, “but Sulacha, didn't you used to make a habit of going to...? What was the road house? Tafarn Coch?”
“Yea,” said Sulacha. “Twenty year ago and back before that. But it was always a good tavern. Clean beds and soup and their dark red ale all night.”
“Well that sounds good enough. And these cow paths undoubtedly lead to the road from here to there. We can talk about all this on the way.”
“So it's a long way yet, then?” said Badharan as he hurried alongside Neron.
“To the New Dragon Caves? It'll take weeks of right hard travel. But we can worry about unicorn
s and provisions and a sword for you, after a good night's sleep.”
They had to cross a stile onto a lane and follow it to the road, but it was not long at all until they were stepping into the heady smells of Tafarn Coch. There were several vacant tables this time of night, so they took one on the far side of the great common room near the fiddler, who was working out a speculative tune while the piper, the gittern player and the bodhran player were off finding lasses and drinks.
“They've got pickled beets and eggs yonder,” said Olloo as he sank onto a chair.
“Red eggs?” said Obbree. “They'd be red then, wouldn't they?”
“And I saw a crock of ordinary plain ones,” said Olloo with a nod.
“Well,” said Sulacha. “Soup all 'round? And they're a-frying something... Hey Mistress! Well I'll declare! She was a-smiling and nodding to each one at that table and wouldn't even look our way...”
“Maybe she can only remember orders for a table at a time,” said Obbree as he looked for a place to spit. “I expect it takes a while to get so ye can keep straight orders from several tables.”
“There's the other one, coming from the kitchen,” said Badharan. “Now what's her problem?”
Sulacha smiled and waved at her. “Why, she's going to take orders from those people on the far side of us, who came in after we did,” he said, watching her go by.
“Do you reckon we smell bad after all our time, wallowing in the troll filth?” said Olloo as, the second maid ignored them on her way back to the kitchen.
“You mean it seems to you that people in here are a-looking us over a bit too much?” said Neron.
“Kind of does.”
“Maybe I'm imagining things, but I'm reminded of a tavern in Sweetpea we had to fight our way out of, years ago,” said Neron. “And then again, it really has been a while since we bathed.”
“I've been watching the old fellow behind the bar,” said Sulacha. “He ought to remember me. We used to visit every time I came. Let me go find out how he's been.”
And with a nod from Neron, he made his way between the tables to the bar.
“Mister Beli!” he cried down the length of the bar, giving a slap of delight to the counter top.
Belli came his way, drying and setting out overturned glasses, but he neither looked up nor smiled. There was no mistaking that he was the same fellow, but he'd lost every hair on his head, his rosy cheeks had fallen to become his wattling jowls, and his buoyant energy was now completely spent on the endless labor of hauling about his extra weight.
“So how've you been all these years?” said Sulacha as Beli came all the way to his end for three dirty pint glasses. “Remember me?”
Belly went back down the bar to sink the glasses into the sudsy wash tub, as if no one at all were standing where Sulacha was.
“I thought you'd know me,” mumbled Sulacha with a bewildered shake of his head. “We used to visit all the time...”
Beli came down to his end with a wet rag on the counter top to scour his way to the other end without a word. He was back directly with a big white towel. “Go to the kitchen door outside,” he said, as if he were addressing the streak of ketchup down his apron, and slid away on his towel without so much as a glance his way.
A scald of alarm went through him. He could see from across the room that no one was sitting at their table, and now Beli was nowhere to be seen. He slipped outside at once with every eye in the room looking right at him. He dashed across the street and squatted in the shadows. As soon as he saw that he was not going to be followed, he went to the kitchen door at the back of the tavern to find Beli standing in the doorway, waiting for him.
“You were taking so long, I was afraid somebody had jumped you,” he said, reaching out with his clean beefy hand for an eager shake. “I'm so very sorry, Sulacha.
There's no way in all this wide world that I'd forget our talks. I've always considered you to be my Elf friend.”
“What's going on?”
“Now I want 'ee to know that I saw your party slip out, and I sent somebody from the kitchen to find them. They could see something wasn't right...”
“I'm really lost, Mister Beli.”
“Spitemorta wants every Elf alive in this entire world found and kilt. Now pardon my asking a question like this, but why wouldn't you, an actual Elf, know such a thing?”
“I've been out in the wilderness...”
“I'll say! Queen Spitemorta became Empress Spitemorta above twenty year ago.
Did you not know?”
“I'd heard, but I was well away from any place settled...”
“Now listen,” he said, suddenly thrusting himself into Sulacha's face. “She's paying out as much gold as it takes to fill any Elf scalp and ears which is brought in. And anyone helping an Elf so much as to give him the time o' day shall be drawed and quartered in front of all of his neighbors.” He straightened up with a sigh and planted his fists on his hips. “I'd swear you ones would be better off if you went right back to that wilderness of yours.”
“What we need is unicorns. Could you buy some for us? I mean, it doesn't look like we can be seen out doing it. We've got the money.”
Beli turned back into the doorway. “No, Bwced,” he said. “That's three. I want five big sacks of victuals. And fuller than that. Have them good and full.
“Unicorns, aye?” he said, turning back to Sulacha. “I know of a fellow named Watson who might have a few animals to sell. He's always had good things to say about Elves, but he won't take kindly to having Elves seen a-coming onto his place. I'll tell you how to get there...”
“Mister Beli!” came a haling whisper out of the darkness.
“There's Tegell, right behind 'ee,” said Beli with a nod, “and it looks like he's found your party.”
In a very short while, Neron, Sulacha, Olloo, Obbree and Badharan found themselves hurrying out of town by the same road they came in on, on their way to find the farmer with the unicorns.
“Isn't it too late for Elves like us to go surprising strange farmers in the middle of the night?” said Sulacha.
“We'll have to bed down out of sight and go knocking at sunrise,” said Neron.
“We have a couple of fellows following us, maybe ten rod behind,” said Olloo in a hush as he caught up with Neron.
“Well let's see if they get tired,” said Neron, picking up his pace at once. “I wouldn't look at them. They're probably ugly as can be. We never did get you a sword, did we Badharan?”
“We haven't spent the night yet, either,” said Badharan.
In the next moment they were stopped in their tracks by the clamor and cries of dozens of people leaping out from hiding between the houses on both sides of the road.
The pair following drew their swords and came running. Neron wheeled square about and hurled a blinding ball of fire at each one, knocking them flat with a pair of deafening concussions as they winked out, sending the crowd running away into the night, wailing in terror.
“Run!” hushed Neron. “I'll find where ye camp. Take my sack of supper. Go!”
For a speechless moment, everyone hesitated, then dashed into the blackness the instant Obbree grabbed up the sack.
“Oh cow-ards!” hollered Neron, the moment everyone was gone. “Hoy cowards! Come get your Elf scalp!”
There was no answer. He could hear a dog barking down the street. Someone in one of the nearby houses closed a shutter.
“Oh toute faces!” he cried out again. “Better come kiss my sweet masanna!”
Still no answer, but it sounded like someone nearby stumbled over a bucket.
“Hoy! Do you need Spitemorta here with you to hold your hands so you'll be brave enough to come and get your Elf?”
There was a scuff of sand across a cobblestone. Finding himself suddenly ringed by thirteen surly men, Neron furiously threw seven fiery balls, pounding off like a volley of cannon shots, leaving all thirteen attackers out cold.
Far away, Sulacha, Oll
oo, Obbree and Badharan came to a junction in the road.
“Good morning!” called Neron from the fork to the right.
“My word!” cried Badharan. “You've got the taisteal gift. I thought it had died out long ago.”
“I nearly have, I can tell you,” said Neron. “It really takes it out of you, especially after throwing better than two dozen balls of lightning...”
“So that's what that was,” said Obbree.
“Yeap,” said Neron. “Too many stinkers for swords. It was the only choice we had. But I'm exhausted, and I'll have to use the taisteal all over again.”
“Aren't we going to buy unicorns?” said Sulacha.
“He doesn't have any...”
“You've already been there?” said Olloo.
“It's getting light in the east,” said Neron. “Watson was already up when I got there, and he doesn't have any unicorns. Spitemorta's soldiers take all the unicorns a fellow might trouble to raise and just laugh in his face for to pay him. Now, he's sold us a mulycorn and a rickety old wain, though he wants some of our victuals for breakfast to finish out what we owe him...”
“What the ding-dong blazes is a mulycorn?” said Olloo.
“We never had them across the salt sea,” said Sulacha. “A mulycorn is the stud cross between a donkey and a unicorn. And a jennycorn is the mare, though I've never seen either one, for my part.”
“Not many folks want to keep them,” said Neron. “But don't worry. Watson showed me where he'd clipped off the mulycorn's tush...”
“Tush?” said Obbree.
“Yea. They can rip ye open if you don't do that.”
By the time the catbirds were singing from the shadows of the arbors and apple trees, and Watson had found springy boards for everyone to sit on so that the wain would not pound everyone's insides to mush, the Elves got aboard, raised their hoods to hide their ears and waited for Badharan to give the reins a shake and say: “Get up!”
Out in the lane, Olloo scratched his head. “Sire,” he said as he leant forward.
“You were a-saying something about using taisteal again. How's that, if you don't min my asking?”
“We're on our way to Mt. Bedd, where I'll leave you all with the Fairies while I travel by taisteal to the New Dragon Caves for the dragons to fetch you there. It's just too dangerous for us to be traveling afoot.”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 200
