“And thank you, too, for your courtesy,” said Douglas to the Watch Elf. “May you and your wife have a quiet day.”
“Every day is quiet here,” said the Elf wife, who had enjoyed talking to Douglas and the Otter and serving them griddle cakes the size of small coins, delicious and rich with clover honey and milkweed butter. “It’s the way we like it. In the olden, terrible days, we had enough excitement for six Elf lifetimes hereabouts.”
Although they would have liked to stay and chat with the kindly couple, the travelers returned to their boat and shortly pushed off, heading in under the first of the overarching oaks.
“We might have stopped long enough to see their morning parade,” complained the Otter. “I confess to being very curious about these Near Immortals.”
“A Bump of Curiosity is a good thing to soothe, but there is at least one drawback to accepting Fairy hospitality,” lectured Douglas, spelling the boat swiftly forward against a current much stronger than it had been in the two days before. The river here had grown narrower and the heavily wooded banks steeper. “Fairy Time runs differently from ours.”
“How do you mean?” Marbleheart wriggled his nose in perplexity. “A day is a day, isn’t it?”
“We might go with the Guardians, watch their parade, and have lunch with them and take a quick look at the Great Gateway, which I understand is quite a splendid and memorable sight to see, but when we resumed our journey, we might find that not a single day but a hundred days, perhaps even a hundred years, had passed.”
“Great Groupers! Let’s get through this place,” cried the Otter. “I don’t even intend to swim these waters!”
Douglas grinned and stepped up their speed. There was really no reason not to speed. The river was, as the Faerie Guard officer had said, unobstructed, deep, and straight as an arrow.
Under the trees it was dim, cool, and still—rather restful, in fact. After three hours of steady skimming they sighted a bright light ahead, the last arching of the Forest oaks at the western verge.
Beyond, the noontime sun shone on treeless, emerald green meadowlands rolling gently to the horizon. At the farthest reach of sight rose low purple hills and, dimly in haze beyond them, a dark blue north-south range of mountains capped with snow.
The river in front of them now wound lazily from side to side, sliding rapidly around an occasional ait or rippling over rock-bedded shallows.
As they ate their noontime meal on the move, the travelers heard singing and, rounding a sharp bend, came upon a crowd of twenty or so diminutive men and women seated on smooth rocks along the shore, harmonizing beautifully in song.
At the approach of strangers the singers were startled into silence and seemed about to bolt into the brush beside the stream, but Douglas called out to them in Faerie, and the Nixies—for that was what they were—skipped lightly out upon the water to meet the gondola, greeting the travelers shyly but courteously and asking for news.
“You’ve heard about the Battle of Sea against Frigeon?” asked Douglas, and they shook their heads. The Wizard moored the gondola to a sapling among the rocks and brought the dainty people up to the present. He was getting quite good at it by now.
“So, Frigeon is a changed man since he regained his conscience,” Douglas finished. “He’d locked it away in a Great Gray Pearl, which allowed him to do all sorts of wicked things without feeling remorse. He has even changed his name and is now called Serenit. As punishment, he’s having to help undo all his evil spells and other harms, and is held a virtual prisoner in the land once known as Eternal Ice, although it hasn’t got much ice left these days.”
The Nixies laughed with glee at the news and cavorted on the river in such a merry way that Marbleheart, who loved nothing better than a romp in water, joined them—the first time he had been in the river since they had entered the Forest of Remembrance.
“We were especially terrified of Frigeon-that-was,” explained the Nixie Choirmaster. “Long ago we lived far to the north of here, and when Frigeon came to live nearby, his icy magic froze our pretty streams, so we left our elder home and fled southward.”
“You were not here during Last Battle of Kingdom, then?”
“No, we came a bit later. Fortunately so, for these now-peaceful meadows were the scene of the worst fighting in the Battle. Two hundred years ago or more, that was. Tens of thousands of Men and thousands of Near Immortals fought here for seven dreadful days and fearful nights. Thousands were destroyed, including an amazing number of Faeries, who are very difficult to destroy.”
“I’ve heard the story from one who was there,” said Douglas, nodding sadly. “So this is Last Battleground? It doesn’t look so grim now, though. I’ve rarely seen a more peaceful-looking place. It reminds me of my home Valley.”
“We’re proud of our work clearing the devastations of war we found everywhere when we first came here,” said the Choirmaster. “The whole plain was littered with broken weapons and horribly ravaged bodies of Men and beasts.”
“It must have been truly horrible!” gasped the Otter.
The Choirmaster bobbed his head solemnly. “We buried the dead in long barrows on the western edge of Battleground. By then they were but rotting rags, rusted armor, and bare bones! We managed to separate the enemy from the companions by the remains of their armor, so they didn’t have to share the same grave mounds, at least. We did whatever we could, but I fear many have been uneasy between death and life ever since.”
“Where are these barrows? I would have thought you’d put them in the center of the field, or perhaps here by the streamside.”
“Our elders consulted with the Queen of Faerie and she advised us to keep the barrows as far from the habitations of Men and Near Immortals as possible—especially far from the Faerie Forest—yet still within the Field of Chaos, so we interred their bones in the far west, under the foothills of the Tiger’s Teeth Mountains. You can just see their peaks there,” he said, and pointed off to the west.
“That’s where we’re headed,” said Marbleheart. “The place we’re looking for—Pfantas. It’s in the foothills, I understand.”
“You’re correct,” said the Choirmaster. “None of us has been that far west, but rumors come to us ... not a pleasant land to visit, I fear.”
He called his singers to attention with a rap of his baton and they sang a farewell-and-safe-journeying song as the sleek gondola surged forward once more, breasting the swift current.
Bloody Brook shortly began whirling madly about sharp, half-sunken rocks and foaming as the calm waters turned to rapids, but even so, Myrn’s reliable pushing magic was strong enough to move the boat against the current at great speed.
Marbleheart dived in and swam ahead. He reported the water was still many feet deep if they avoided the shallows on the outside of curves. Both travelers kept close watch from then on so as not to run afoul of snags or damage the gondola’s thin hull on unseen ledges beneath the surface.
That night they slept aboard the boat and in the morning pushed on as quickly as they could safely go. The Choirmaster’s words had infected Douglas with a sense of urgency. The air had turned cooler again, and they were slowed by morning mists that hung over the water and didn’t lift until well into midmorning. Otherwise, the day passed without incident.
By late afternoon they were close under the barren foothills of the Western Mountains. The densest fog yet suddenly lowered about them, cutting off all distance and shrouding everything in an eerie white silence.
Douglas made landing and, picking a red maple leaf from the ground enlarged and altered it into a tent snug against the damp night air. He also started a fire which, despite his best magical efforts, burned with only a feeble light and meager heat.
It turned quite cold after an unseen sunset. A mournful breeze blew fitfully out of the north. It carried to them an acrid, musty smell, something like last year’s moldering leaves, Douglas thought, with just a hint of something else, something unpleasant and il
l intentioned, in the swirling mist.
He shuddered from the chill and moved his blanket closer to the fire. When he looked about for his companion, Marbleheart was nowhere to be seen. The Otter often went off in the evening to seek his preferred food and to explore the riverbank out of Otterly curiosity.
“He’ll be back when he gets cold and wet,” Douglas reassured himself, and he went to sleep almost at once.
****
Marbleheart followed the river for a few hundred yards, looking for something to eat. A tiny, hesitant trickle fed in from the north, between clay banks only dimly visible when the fog shifted for a moment.
He followed the streamlet but lost it when it disappeared into the ground in a low and damp place.
“A spring, I guess,” he said aloud to himself. “Wonder what that is?”
“That” was a spark of bluish light that flashed once and disappeared, as if someone had opened a door late at night and light from a room had spilled out for just a moment before the door was quickly slammed to.
A relative of the Firefly we talked to on the other side of the forest, Marbleheart decided. I’d like to ask him a few questions about the way ahead, if I can find him.
He hunkered along, Otter fashion, covering considerable ground quickly despite his ungainly land gait. The steady trot, if that is what you’d want to call it, lulled his mind until he was almost asleep on his feet.
He was barely aware when he passed between two low, steep-sided hills covered with dry grass that rustled uneasily. He thought it rather queer that the grass here was sere and bleached almost white. Everywhere else about, things had been green and new budding with early spring. There was no wind at all now.
He came upon a low, wide-open, timber-framed doorway in the side of the hill on his right. A dim light—a bluish flickering only—showed from deep within. The air seemed to vibrate with ...?
“Uh, time to go back, I think,” Marbleheart thought aloud, shivering despite his warm coat.
A harsh, whispering voice from inside the door said, “No, come in, Sea Otter! You are to be King of the Hill here, very shortly. Let me prepare you for your coronation!”
The Otter shook his head groggily and tried to turn away, but an unseen hand, rough and hard as horn, reached out and plucked him from his feet by the scruff of his neck.
“Oh, I say, now!” protested Marbleheart, trying to twist about to sink his sharp teeth into the unseen fingers. His jaws snapped closed on nothing!
The blue light crackled angrily and went out, plunging the doorway into ebony blackness. Another invisible hand clutched the Otter’s snout, choking off his air supply. Almost at once, the blackness became even darker. Marbleheart lost consciousness.
Somewhere a nightjar rasped into the thickening fog. Somewhere there was brief, evil laughter, softly, slightly un-sane. But there was no one to hear it.
Chapter Eight
Barrow Wights
Douglas was awakened by the distant pound of hoof-beats.
When he sat up and looked cautiously about he found the fog was thicker than ever, an impenetrable wall all about him. The sounds rang clear but somehow changed, magnified and carried by the mist. The hoofbeats were coming rapidly nearer.
A chill of fear touched his spine when he remembered where he was and the terrible things that had been done two centuries past on this very spot.
He shook himself, much as did Black Flame, straightened his posture, and rose to his feet, facing the approaching horsemen—if that was what they were—coming at a muffled gallop along the grassy bank of Bloody Brook. He could now hear the soft jingling of harnesses and the occasional creak of saddles under the weight of a rider, or a soft strike of metal against metal.
Out of the fog a dark figure on a tall, pale horse loomed before him and reined suddenly to a halt. Douglas recognized him as a Faerie Rider, although he’d never seen one before that moment.
“I thought you ought to know,” the Rider said in a fair, polite baritone, speaking in Faerie tongue, “that the Otter Marbleheart has been trapped in one of the barrows. He will be reft of soul at midnight, if not sooner rescued.”
“Marbleheart!” cried Douglas, for the first time realizing the Otter was still nowhere to be seen. “Where?”
“The first group of barrows to the north of here,” said the Rider, pointing with the lance he carried in his right hand. “I can tell you no more, Fire Wizard.”
“So the rascal’s curiosity has gotten him into trouble, eh?” said Douglas somewhat grimly. “Thank you! I’ll rescue him. Who is it holds a friend of Brightglade in thrall?”
“Goblins—who have profaned these ancient and sacred places,” said the Faerie knight. “Barrow-Wights, Men call their sort. Will you ask for our assistance? We know you to be a Faerie friend, beloved by Brightwing, and under our protection, if you seek it.”
“Where are you bound in the night, and at whose behest?”
The knight considered this question briefly before he answered.
“We are Wanderers, a Faerie Rade,” the knight said, somewhat sadly. “Marget and Aedh have called us home. We ride to the Great Gate in Craylor Wendys. I cannot say what their purpose is but we consider it imperative that we answer the call at greatest haste. We have ridden day and night from where we were camped in Emptylands.”
Douglas was aware of dozens more Faerie riders as shapes just beyond his vision in the fog.
“If Marget of Faerie calls, you must go as quickly as possible, of course,” he said. “I’ll not detain you. I’ll take care of friend Otter. Give my best wishes to your Queen, Sir Knight. Go in peace as well as in haste!”
“Thank you, Douglas Brightglade. You are a gentleman as well as a Wizard,” said the Knight, turning his horse away. The sounds of hooves, galloping again, quickly faded away.
“Goblins, this time!” sighed Douglas. “Not Hobgoblins! And if they have taken over an Enemy barrow, they’ll have acquired much evil power, the books say, drawn from the unease of the anciently dead warriors of the Dark Enemy!”
He sat beside his fire for a few minutes, thinking before acting as Flarman had taught him, and then held up his right hand, forefinger extended, and spoke a Word of Power.
A bright orange glow sprang up above his head, piercing the mist to a hundred or more feet. By the light he began searching the ground nearby on his knees, crawling in the wet grass along the top of the riverbank. After a short while he found what he sought and, plucking it up, stowed it in his wide left sleeve.
Next, I’ll need a special kind of light to find my way in evil places, he thought. “Ah, here!”
He picked an orange globe-shaped seed pod from a vine that grew among the thorny bushes bordering the river. Placing the pod on his left palm, he made a simple gesture with his right hand, starting with his fingers clenched, lifting his hand and spreading the fingers wide at the same time.
The papery pod rapidly swelled until it was the size of a man’s head, then even larger. Taking out his jackknife, Douglas carved large, round, cheerful eyes, a triangular nose, and a wide, smiling mouth into the dry pod skin, now as thick as a pumpkin’s rind.
The bright flame over his head flowed down to rest within the pod and shine steadily through the carved eyes, nose, and mouth and glow softly through translucent skin.
“A good, old jack-o’-lantern!” Douglas exclaimed with satisfaction. “Fit to frighten away even the most horrific haunts. Now to find their borrowed barrow.”
Trusting his instincts as much as reason, he found a tiny rill not far upstream and recognized at once the marks of the Otter’s webbed feet in the soft clay beside it. The marks led away from the river.
Following swiftly, he came in a few minutes to the oozing spring. From there his lantern showed him the loom of the first pair of burial mounds. The fog was still thick, but the jack-o’-lantern’s gleam, golden yellow and cheerful, cut through the worst of it, revealing everything almost as if it were day.
Circli
ng the right-hand mound, then the one on the left, Douglas searched for signs of the Otter’s passage. At length he found the place where Marbleheart’s footprints ended abruptly at a steeper-than-usual hillside.
“There’s a door here,” he murmured to himself. “And Marbleheart must be within.”
“And,” he added, “I’d better hurry. It’s almost midnight!”
He stepped forward, placing his left hand against what seemed to be a steep slope of rough gravel and sere, matted grass. His hand passed right through, followed by the rest of his body. The entry had been hidden by a simple illusion.
He was in a straight, roughly paved, dirt-walled passage angling down into the very heart of the mound. The tunnel was empty, except for a spear, a ten-foot shaft from which hung a moldered gray pennant, caught in a rusty bracket on one wall. No way to tell what color it had once been. It fell to dry shreds and dust when he reached out to touch it.
“That style of spear was used by the Enemy. And I doubt a Light pennant would disintegrate like that, even after two centuries,” he told himself. “Our flags were woven of noble metals. This is one of the Nixies’ mounds for Enemy dead!”
The jack-o’-lantern lighted his way down into a great, low-ceilinged, oval room perhaps sixty feet long, twenty feet wide, and six feet high in the center. It was empty except for a single flat block of jet black stone, roughly rectangular and three feet high, at the far end.
On its rough surface lay the unconscious Sea Otter!
“No time for being dainty,” said Douglas aloud, awakening tumbled echoes. He heard the distant sound of footsteps approaching from outside the barrow, shuffling in the dry grass. The jack-o’-lantern flickered wildly for a moment.
“Marbleheart! Marbleheart!” Douglas called out sharply. “Forsake those wretched dreams! Awake and follow me out of here. It’s in your own tomb you are sleeping.”
The sleek water mammal stirred, muttered something Douglas didn’t catch, then rolled on his back and put his four feet in the air, obviously intending to continue his deep slumber.
Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) Page 9
