Erg’Ran shrugged his still powerful shoulders. “I suppose you’d have to hear about them anyway, Enchantress. Very well then. The witches were female only. Some of your mother’s less pleasant tendencies when it comes to the men in her life may have something to do with their influence.”
“She associated with them?”
“That was to be, yes. The witches needed males, of course, for the obvious reason of procreation. They would waylay travelers, slaughter the females and kidnap the males to be used—you get the idea. Most of the male prisoners were killed, of course, after it was certain that fertilization had taken place. A witch can tell immediately, of course, if she’s with child. Some of the males—the less lucky ones, by my reckoning—were gelded and kept as slaves. The witches didn’t treat their slaves well, and when these wretches would fall ill or show the first signs of age, they were put to death. There were stories—never substantiated—that the witches ate human flesh. I don’t believe those stories, although there is truth to the tales that they would consume the hearts of those who died bravely.”
“How is it that I have never heard of this tribe?” Swan wanted to know.
“I never thought it decent to tell you, Enchantress,” Erg’Ran smiled, albeit a little awkwardly. “Now, Enchantress, I pray that I might be permitted to continue.”
“Of course,” Swan conceded, but there were more questions about the witches, more answers that he must know and she would pry from his memory.
“At last, as I said, our mother’s second-sight prevailed and we were able to locate on a plain not far from the very tip of Edge Land what appeared to be the site of a long forgotten city. From the subtle indicators along the ground, it had been very large. There were a few monoliths standing, on one of them a few lines of runes faintly discernible, apparently in the Old Tongue, or something earlier. Your grandfather was very excited; for the very first time, I saw what had always so fascinated him with learning. It was exciting! Of course, I wasn’t about to mention that, young as I was. But I think that he realized my interest, because he made certain that I accompanied him throughout the examination of the area.”
“And what did you find, Erg’Ran?”
Erg’Ran cocked his eyebrow as he exhaled. “More than we’d bargained for, Enchantress.”
His story-telling techniques perennially irritated her, Erg’Ran’s flare for the dramatic always interfering with his narrative flow. But Swan endured it as well as she always had.
“So, with my mother’s help and some considerable help from your mother, my sister, the few lines from the early dialect of the Old Tongue found on that monolith were translated. It appeared that we might have found the legendary Barad’Il’Koth—”
Swan gasped.
“—as, indeed, time has proven that we had. Several things happened almost at once. A messenger, who had taken up after us once it was no longer possible to send messages by arrow shot, brought word that a fearsome Gle’Ur’Gya chieftain whom I later learned was named Ag’Riig had decided to raid inland. My father was our greatest warrior, and duty called. I prevailed upon him that I might accompany him. Practicality dictated that three men—he, the messenger and myself—stood a better chance should we encounter the witches again. Your grandmother ordered that your grandfather and I should depart and the squad of guards from the palace would remain behind.”
“And?”
Erg’Ran smiled. “We were off on another adventure, your grandfather and I. We managed to avoid the witches, thanks in large part to a spellcasting my mother made. To reach the shoreline where Ag’Riig’s vessel would be awaiting his return, the shortest route was through the great wood which we had meticulously avoided on the journey to Edge Land, avoided at the cost of several days’ travel.”
Somehow, Swan knew what Erg’Ran was going to say. It was no magic, just an unpleasant guess. “When it was too late to turn back, we encountered the tree demons.”
“Ugh!” A shiver of disgust ran along Swan’s spine. “Don’t tell me the details. Please!”
“I hadn’t planned to, Enchantress. Suffice it to say, your grandfather and I were both injured, and our companion, the messenger, was lost. We escaped the wood with our lives, racing toward the Woroc’Il’Lod coast to rendezvous with our warriors and confront the Gle’Ur’Gya chieftain.
“But, meanwhile,” Erg’Ran went on, “something far more important was about to transpire on the plain where my mother and sister had remained behind.
“Unbeknownst to us all, the artifact which Eran had discovered within my father’s collection was the key which would allow her to unlock the secrets of the old magic from the days when Barad’Il’Koth was the center of power on Creath. She was about to take that power into her hands.”
Erg’Ran stood up with some difficulty. Swan watched him as he paced about, his peg tapping rhythmically on the deck planking. She shifted position, perching now on the edge of the step, knees nearly to her chin, feet drawn under her, lost beneath her skirts. “Barad’Il’Koth ceased to exist as a city a very long time before the coming of Mir. What befell its inhabitants is still unknown. It is as if they vanished from the face of Creath. Perhaps some few remained behind and it was their legacy which Eran discovered. But whatever befell the evil ones of Barad’Il’Koth, a cache of tablets graven in stone was left behind. This legacy became our woe, yours and mine and all of Creath’s.
“The tablets,” Erg’Ran went on, “were the means by which Eran learned to heighten her magical powers to a degree unknown in Creath since ages before the coming of Mir, magic more evil than that which Mir himself dispelled.”
“Didn’t your mother try to stop her?”
Erg’Ran’s voice caught, and she thought she spied a tear in his eye as he turned quickly away from her.
“Eran killed my mother.”
Swan lowered her face into her hands...
Alan Garrison awoke. He was cold, and his right wrist felt stiff. He raised his right arm from beneath the blankets and rolled back the knit cuff of his bomber jacket. His wrist had been broken, a compound fracture, bone sticking through his skin. There was no evidence of that now.
But what had transpired was not a dream. Looking aft along the deck, the sight of the cyclonic wave was an undeniable reality. It waited for them to venture out from the aura of the summer palace, waited to kill them. Since his right hand seemed to work perfectly, Garrison raised its middle finger and jerked it toward the wave. Somehow, he hoped, Swan’s mother would be able to see it, know the meaning of the gesture, appreciate fully the words which would normally accompany it, were she only near enough to hear them.
His guns lay beside him on the deck, as did his knives. Swan had been busy. The guns were in seemingly perfect condition, despite being doused in seawater. Garrison pushed the button on one of the knives and the blade sprang out reassuringly. He closed the knife.
Since he seemed to be in one piece, he tried standing up. Aside from a little stiffness, the maneuver was completely successful. His pants were ripped along the right leg from the cuff halfway up the right thigh. Matter of factly, Garrison assumed that Swan would use her magic to fix the tear when she got around to it.
Garrison stretched, and turned to look toward the forward section of their little ship. He immediately started walking toward the bow pulpit, where Swan sat, face in her hands, Erg’Ran standing nearby.
Most of the ship’s company were still asleep, so Garrison didn’t call to Swan until he was nearly beside Erg’Ran. “What’s wrong, Swan?”
Erg’Ran answered. “I just informed my niece that her mother murdered her grandmother.”
Garrison just looked at the older man’s face for a moment. “I came in late, remember?” Garrison looked at Swan, then dropped to his knees before her, raising her face in his hands. Her eyes brimmed over with tears.
Throughout the morning and the afternoon, Swan busied herself about their five ships, using her magic to speed the healing of the injured, facil
itate repairs to the ships themselves and the attendant gear of the ships’ companies, generally avoiding any sort of prolonged contact with Alan Garrison or her newly discovered uncle, Erg’Ran.
Food magically appeared at midday, but Garrison wasn’t hungry, worried instead about Swan.
The most time Garrison spent with her was when she used her magic to see to his sartorial needs. “I’ll make new clothes for you, but of the style you are used to.” Swan led him forward along the deck. “You’ll be naked for an eye blink as the new clothes replace the old.” She placed her hands at the top of his head, then gradually drew them down along the length of his body.
Garrison’s hair actually felt as clean as if he’d just washed it when her hands passed through it, magically combed as well. “This is nuts,” he told her, but she only smiled. At least, he thought, he’d gotten her to shed her frown for a moment. There was a tingling feeling where his stubble had been growing, and in the next instant, his face felt clean shaven.
Her hands stopped moving as she asked, “Do you want your new clothes to be the same color as before?”
“Yes, please.”
Swan’s hands continued their motion along the length of his body, only very rapidly, the old T-shirt vanishing, replaced with a new one in the blink of an eye. She actually blushed a little and averted her eyes when her hands passed below his belt, but he never even felt a draft. Somehow, she was not only replacing old clothes with new, but cleaning his body as well.
Under different circumstances, what Swan was doing would have felt terribly erotic. At the moment, it was insanely frustrating.
The new boots felt good, and their leather positively gleamed.
“There.” Swan turned away and left.
Garrison called after her with a superfluous, “Thanks,” but she didn’t turn around.
By late afternoon, Garrison took a break from helping Gar’Ath with rigging the new sail and took Erg’Ran aside, up to the bow pulpit. “What gives?” Garrison sat on the same step where Swan had sat that morning.
Erg’Ran seemed to ponder the question, then a moment later answered, “I suppose that I should tell you, Champion. She had to know. And, because of who you are, you should know as well.”
“So, tell me.”
And Erg’Ran did. Garrison had given up on the use of his wristwatch as anything other than an item of jewelry on Creath because of the way time seemed to move at differing speeds without any rhyme or reason. After what Garrison mentally gauged as an hour, Erg’Ran concluded by saying, “That is what I told the Enchantress, Champion.” As Garrison was about to ask for the rest of the story, Swan joined them. “I saw the two of you speaking with one another.”
“And?” Garrison inquired, looking up at her.
Swan shook her head resolutely. “I’m sorry that I have been so much to myself. I just, uh—” Swan began to cry, heavy sobs from deep within her racking her body with tremors.
Garrison stood, swept her into his arms and just held her.
Gar’Ath cried out from the stern rail, “It’s vanishing, breaking up! The wave is disappearing!”
Swan looked up. Garrison handed her his handkerchief, fresh like the clothes he wore and owing to the same magical manufacture.
Swabbing at her eyes, his arm still around her, Swan moved toward the rail.
Garrison was afraid to blink. Because, obviously, he’d never witnessed anything like this, he had no idea if there would be some enormous puff of smoke or what would happen.
The air around the cyclonic wave seemed to bend, ripple, twist, contort with an energy that was, somehow, more powerful than the wave itself.
The trough was shrinking, the wave expanding and contracting, as if it were breathing.
For an instant, the cyclonic wave grew, as if racing to obliterate all view of the horizon. Garrison had to blink. The cyclonic wave imploded, shrinking to nothing, vanishing into the contorted air surrounding it.
And the sea was calm, as if the cyclonic wave had never been.
A cheer rose up from their own ship and from the other four. Swan threw her arms around Garrison’s neck and Garrison kissed her forehead.
“I love you,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, as the cheering grew louder and louder by the second. But then he knew that she had. Swan turned her face up to his and—she had to be standing on her toes, he thought, or levitating herself with her magic—whispered into his ear, “I love you, Al’An.”
“The heck with this cheering thing,” Garrison whispered back. He had better things to do with his mouth. He kissed her and kept on kissing her.
The cheers kept up, grew louder still. After a while, Garrison realized that the cheers were no longer because of the disappearance of the cyclonic wave. The cheers were for the Enchantress and her Champion. When he stopped kissing her, Swan laughed and shouted to him, “Kiss me again, Al’An! Kiss me again!”
He did...
It was late that evening, after a hearty supper, that things were once again calm. In the morning, at dawn, they would set sail again for Edge Land, and Swan had promised them “a fine wind to carry us.” Garrison could imagine from whose hands that wind would originate.
Swan brought cups of wine for Garrison and Erg’Ran. Once again, they sat on the steps leading to the bow pulpit. Globes of blue-white magical light swayed almost imperceptibly in harmony with the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull of their ship, similar arrays of light visible on the other four vessels of the armada.
The sky was particularly beautiful, Garrison observed. The sun was not yet gone from the horizon, both moons in ascendancy. For the first time since coming to Creath, Alan Garrison noticed that the two moons were apparently identical in size. There was probably a story about them. There seemed to be a story about everything in Creath, and the moons were likely not the exception.
But Alan Garrison was more concerned with the story Erg’Ran was finally continuing. “After my father and I escaped the wood, we made good speed toward the shore where we would meet with a company of our warriors and deal with Ag’Riig of the Gle’Ur’Gya before he and his men could reach their vessel.”
Swan sat down beside Garrison, gathering her skirts close about her legs, a shawl around her shoulders against the breeze which blew fitfully across the water. With her head resting against his shoulder, Garrison felt her breath against his face when she looked up into his eyes. “At the time,” Erg’Ran continued, “we, of course, knew nothing of what had transpired between my mother and my sister. All that might have alerted us was that my father seemed strangely tense, sad. He himself put it off to our experience in the wood against the tree demons and the tragic death of the young messenger.
“In fact, there was such a love bond between them, your grandparents, that the husband actually felt the death of his wife, in the very instant that it occurred, it would seem.”
Garrison knew that this was painful for Swan, but they were committed to the story now and Swan seemed to want to know the whole story. So Garrison asked a logical question. “Did Eran just go to her mother and, well—just kill her?”
“It happened in the passion of the moment, according to the words of the few survivors from the palace guard. Oh, for a memory pool, that I could recall the details more clearly!” Erg’Ran lamented.
Erg’Ran continued his narrative. “My mother discovered Eran with the artifact taken from my father’s collection. The markings—they were not runes, but something else, magical as well. They exactly matched the markings at the base of one of the stone tablets which had been uncovered after the clue translated from the runes on the monolith. Wisely, my mother had decreed that my father alone should be the one to translate the writings from the tablets, lest merely by writing or saving the words some magical incantation would be invoked. For a woman, there would be much greater risk, Champion.”
“Gotchya,” Garrison nodded.
“But my mother translated the tablets?” Swan suggest
ed. “That’s a stupid question. Forgive me for even asking it, uncle. Of course she did.”
“Eran began to translate, and in the very act of doing so, her magical abilities increased. But she learned forbidden knowledge, as well, knowledge which she would use to magnify her powers beyond any seen on Creath since the coming of Mir, perhaps since the most ancient of days. That was her moral undoing, Enchantress, Champion.”
“What kind of forbidden knowledge?” Garrison inquired.
Swan answered, and Garrison was surprised. “Before the coming of Mir, Al’An, a different kind of magic was practiced, the kind that my mother has brought back to Creath. It is the knowledge of this magic which was forbidden. In the earliest times, such magic was more powerful than any of us could imagine.”
“Who forbid it? Having this knowledge, I mean. Mir?” Garrison queried.
“Not forbidden in that way, Al’An. Neither Mir nor anyone ever said that such knowledge could not be acquired, merely that it should not. It is magic which corrupts the user.” And Swan leaned forward, taking Erg’Ran’s hands in hers. “That is why you have chosen now to tell me these facts, isn’t it, Erg’Ran?”
Garrison looked at the older man. “You’re afraid that Swan’s getting too powerful, and that she might go over the edge, like her mom did.”
It took Erg’Ran a moment on the word “mom,” but he responded, “Yes. As a member of the Company of Mir, as one of the comparatively few surviving K’Ur’Mir, as uncle to the Enchantress, yes. I fear for the Enchantress and I fear for Creath should the evil magic overpower her.”
“He doesn’t understand what we’re really talking about, Erg’Ran.”
“So, great! Now I’m the stupid guy, huh?”
After a second, Erg’Ran responded, “No one is saying that, but as a man from the other realm, you cannot comprehend fully the magnitude of power we’re talking about, Champion.”
“So give me an example.”
The Golden Shield of IBF Page 23
