"Money doesn't make the world go round. Power does,” philosophized the wizard. “People get real cooperative when you show them a little muscle. Speaking of which, cut J'tard loose now. It's not wise to upset a Troll."
"I hear tell they munch on boulders."
"And spit out pebbles afterwards."
The sergeant had his men remove J'tard's ropes and gag without delay. The Troll rubbed his wrists vigorously before snatching back his valued club from a cringing soldier. He said nothing to Maldoch. He had no need to. The tusked glower loosed the wizard's way could have curdled Unihorn milk.
"If you lot are out of Yordl, why aren't you taking the Desertlander there? Why ferry him all the way south to Gwilhaire?"
The soldier in charge addressed Bortalth's query. “All of Anarica's on edge, Mister Elf. Traipsing through the barony with a Troll in tow will spook folk quicker than banging a drum in a mule's ear. We're a simple lot up at Yordl and don't take kindly to weirdness upsetting our routine. Never before has a Troll been seen in these parts. I'll guarantee that the big feller would be swinging from a branch the moment he set foot in town, assuming the lynch mob could find a tree stout enough to hang him from. Seeing as I've nothing against Trolls myself, I figured transporting him to Elf-land was the safest bet. Elves are probably far more tolerant of strange people than most."
"Don't count on it,” said Maldoch. “What news from up north? I've been out of touch."
The man shrugged. “Yordl's at the bottom of the princedom. Any bulletins we get are secondhand. But so far all's quiet on the western front."
That droll quip put an end to the conversation. “Can't waste time chatting any longer,” Maldoch gruffly told the group. “You did the right thing bringing my lost pet back, sergeant. I'm sure you have soldiering stuff to get on with. Bortalth, J'tard ... come. I have an ice block back in Lothberen to get out of its wrapper."
—
The trio was a day out from the Elven capital when the morose Troll finally broke his silence to chew out the wizard. “I wasn't lost, Magnificent One. You ditched me."
"Abandonment is such a relative term,” Maldoch threw back at him.
"You left me behind."
"No, you missed the last coach out of town. That wasn't my fault."
J'tard fixed the unremorseful spellcaster with his beady eyes. “I'm not your pet either."
"You are in service to me."
"By order of the Council of Elders."
"You could've refused, so that makes you a voluntary quester and therefore one of my pets. Don't take it so personally. It's a term of affection."
"You have an answer for everything,” grumbled the Troll.
"I should do. Anyone who's been around for as long as I have is bound to have picked up a whole heap of comeback lines. Care to explain what took place in Shadfenn after I vamoosed."
"More of those animated flytraps like the one that brought Garrich down jumped out of the jungle to join the fray. Those made the Mdwumps forget all about me, especially when a fair few of them slug-men began getting mulched by the killer plants. They stampeded like a herd of thirsty Unihorns galloping madly for a waterhole."
"And you ran with them?"
"Danger makes for odd bedfellows. It also puts wings on your feet. I had no trouble outpacing hopping slugs."
Bortalth, listening quietly in the background, asked, “How did you find your way out of Jungular Forest, friend Troll? We've sent the odd scouting party of Foresters into that tangle over the years and they report back the same thing ... it's an impenetrable barrier of vines and rubber trees fraught with unspeakable horrors."
"There are a few nasties lurking in the jungle,” admitted J'tard. ‘Some bigger, uglier, and stronger than me, but none smarter. I kept my wits about me and bashed my way out."
"Impressive stamina,” admired Bortalth.
J'tard shrugged. “I had incentive. I clung onto the pleasure of catching up with Maldoch again."
"I did come back for you,” the wizard claimed in mitigation of his actions.
"With a rescue party of one,” J'tard noted flatly. “No offence to you, Elf."
"Actually, we're on body retrieval detail,” disclosed Bortalth. “Your corpse just happens to be breathing."
"Thanks for nothing,” the Troll said sulkily.
"I wasn't returning just for your remains,” confessed the wizard. “I'm in dire need of Tahriana's Leaf too."
"You came back for the parcel, not the courier!” exclaimed J'tard, fingering the charm dangling from his bullish neck. With a tremendous effort of selflessness, the slighted Troll put a lid on his boiling emotions and surmised, “For your pet Goblin?"
"Garrich is at death's door. Without the curative powers of the Troll talisman he'll die, and thousands more after him when I fail to halt the first ever Race War because of that. The prophecies will become null and void, and the future up for grabs.'
J'tard sighed and gnashed his tusks. “This doesn't entirely excuse your behavior, Magnificent One.'
"I didn't expect it to. Not that it matters one whit to me. I've learned to live my incredibly long life without any regrets whatsoever. Look on the upside, J'tard. At least now I won't have to go to the trouble of getting your replacement."
—
"He's thawing."
The group of Elves, made up of Queen Merainor, Terwain, Prilthar, and Garond, crowded behind the wizard and Troll hovering over the melting Goblin in the wintry grove, their individual exhalations misting in the frosty air. Suffering horribly from the cold, freezing his tush off beneath his wool mantle, J'tard's teeth chattered noisily.
Prilthar spoke again, lifting his musical voice over the clacking dentition. “How long before he melts entirely?"
"Not long,” answered Maldoch, his hands aglow with radiant heat, running them up and down the length of Garrich's frozen form a foot above the encasing block of ice.
Droplets of melt water ran freely down the sides of the steadily shrinking icy casket, until a half hour later the flaccid Goblin was resting in a pool of water. Switching off his radiator spell, the wizard tapped J'tard's broad shoulder. The giant flinched from Maldoch's touch, expecting to be burnt. Relieved to find the old man's hand surprisingly cool, he tenderly lifted the drenched Goblin off the flooded ground, holding him aloft while the Elf physician toweled Garrich dry, before setting him on a dry bed of fresh ferns Prilthar earlier laid out at the foot of the Shadult Greenthe.
The magical bole exuded coldness. Icicles sagged from the frosted branches and the waxy leaves, having lost their luster, crinkled whenever the sentient tree moved her woody limbs.
Maldoch ordered everyone to step back from the barely breathing Goblin. “Except you,” he told J'tard. “Let me have Tahriana's Leaf."
Unscrewing the top off his stone necklace, the Troll delicately lifted out a toothed, lance-shaped leaf wrought long ago from a flawless crystal of pearly white opal quartz. He handed the priceless relic to the wizard.
A millenary old and imbued with the medicinal magic possessed by the eminent Elf healer Tahriana, the leaf traveled back to Rohal Ak Jubai in olden times with a Troll envoy sent on a mercy dash to Lothberen seeking a miracle cure for the malady mysteriously afflicting only the Rahnos Golm Shugak. Doubting the disease specifically ravaging the Council of Elders back then originated naturally, Maldoch strongly suspected a certain interfering wizard of playing dirty. Faced with the total decimation of their leadership, who were popping off like flies one by one, the desperate Desertlanders sought outside medical help from the one race they felt an even remote affinity for. Overcoming their reluctance for involvement with the outside races, the Elves consented to first loan, and then gift, the distraught Trolls with the greatest healing power in the five lands as a supreme gesture of mutuality.
Accepting the talisman, Maldoch instructed J'tard. “Prise open Garrich's mouth.” When the Troll did that, Maldoch popped Tahriana's Leaf under the Goblin's tongue and had J'tard close hi
s gob up.
"Nothing's happening,” critiqued Terwain.
Maldoch snorted. “What were you expecting, a thunderclap and lightning bolt?"
"That would be exciting,” mused the Elf Queen.
"Prepare to be disappointed then,” counseled the wizard. “Elven magic has never been the flashy sort and don't forget that the Troll artifact is of elvish origin. Enchantments in this part of Terrath belong to the extremely subtle type. They don't erupt like a geyser, rather bubble sedately like a simmering mud pool."
The queen's adviser grumped, “Back to playing the waiting game. It's been a month already. When are we going to be rid of this infernal Losther?"
"If Garrich doesn't pull through, I'd say never."
"That isn't funny, Prilthar."
"I wasn't trying to be, Terwain. My patient was seriously poisoned. His survival remains touch and go."
"Tahriana's Leaf is a cure-all,” insisted Maldoch.
"It'll rid his body of the poison,” verified Prilthar, ‘but not entirely dissipate its effects. The boy has been gravely weakened by the trauma. He may not be strong enough to recover. And if that's the case, Garrich will be spending an awfully long time in Gwilhaire at the bottom of a grave."
"That will not be his fate,” swore the wizard. He then barked orders to all and sundry. “Merainor, I'll escort you back to Lothberen where we can take up our talk of Destiny again. Terwain, go and report to Eroc. I know you're dying to. J'tard, you look a fright. Have the healer fix up your cuts and bruises then come join us. Prilthar, continue your watch over Garrich. Arrange to have him littered back to Lothberen the moment he's fit enough for carriage, and make sure he doesn't accidentally swallow the Leaf."
"It is irreplaceable,” said the guardian Troll.
"So is my pet,” Maldoch pointed out. “I don't want him choking to death during his recovery."
"What me do?” Garond asked the mage, forgotten by the rest and eager to do his bit.
"Have your mistress turn the heat back on. It's colder than a glacier in here."
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Chapter Thirty
Garrich ate heartily.
"The Losther will eat us out of tree house and home,” grumbled Terwain.
Defending his gluttonous charge, Maldoch snappily rejoined, “He's a growing boy. You must have been one once, if you can remember that far back. Haven't you advisory stuff to go do?"
The haughty Elf, dressed loosely in an unflattering dun caftan, took the unsubtle hint. On his way out of the cottage, Terwain caught a nasty parting barb thrown by the sardonic spellcaster in the doorway.
"Incidentally, your cloak fits Eroc to a tee."
Alone with his ward, Maldoch looked on as Garrich continued stuffing his face full of peeled burdock leaf stalks and raw thistle root, followed by wild crab apples.
Surfacing up out of his deathly comatose state a week earlier, the easternized Goblin was forgivably confounded by his strange whereabouts. Garrich's last clear memory consisted of fighting for his life on the doorstep of Jungular Forest. After Maldoch filled in the blanks, starting with the Drakenweed sneak attack and finishing off the weird tale employing Tahriana's Leaf to revitalizing effect, the boy was indeed more the wiser but none the better for it. Indebted to those responsible for bringing him back from the brink of death, Garrich struggled at coming to grips with the fact that a plant bested him. He hardly fancied going down in history as a top-notch swordsman who let an overgrown cabbage get the better of him!
That was not the only sore point prickling Garrich's injured pride. His weeks spent clinging to life by an icy thread had not been a time of utter oblivion. In between spells of senseless black Garrich dreamed: flashes of wildly abstract panoramas marked by kaleidoscopic explosions of rainbow sounds that stimulated his imprisoned subconscious. A coma was far from being a restful state.
"No filmy tunnel with a heavenly white light beckoning you forward then?” probed Maldoch.
Garrich had shaken his head. “Was there meant to be?"
"Maybe not,” pondered the wizard, obviously disappointed. “You say of seeing patches of changing color?"
"More like splashes of colored sound,” said the troubled Goblin, struggling to put those surreal mental pictures into words. “What do you think it means?"
"Something or nothing,” analyzed Maldoch. “I have never put much stock in dreams. Usually they are hazy impressions impossible to rationalize. That said the mind is vaster than the universe and equally complex. The dream state may be a window to the soul, a door to awakened spirituality ... or the manhole dropping us into insanity. This is Terwain's bag more than mine. I don't do psych consults. Personally, I put it down as a product of the fever draining the life from you."
Garrich was not swayed. Which explained why he omitted to reveal the full extent of his coma visions to the indifferent wizard. Overlaid on those repetitive, bizarre landscapes of twisted trees and bubbling seas with their parades of crashing and booming hues, a recurrent theme emerged: four alien symbols blinked subliminally with interchanging monotony, the first melding into the middle pair, then evolving into the last with cyclic regularity. Intermingling with that oddity was the fabulous image of a golden-bladed and bejeweled sword winking like a faraway star, leaving the negative imprint of a forked lightning bolt in its afterglow. A dazzling show of unplumbed mysticism, the whole effect raised one question above all others. Were the disjointed visions a poison induced hallucination, or portentous revelations?
Washing down his filling meal with a cup of refreshing elderberry flower juice, Garrich returned Maldoch's studious gaze. The wizard had remained at his beside since his revival. Flattering at first, annoying after the third day, by the end of the week the vigil became downright disturbing.
The old mage smiled. “Good to see you've got your appetite back, boy. You're eating like a Garvian."
"Don't you mean horse?"
"Nope."
Garrich glanced despondently about his austere, timber clad room, eyes coming to rest longingly on the window framing an enticing sunny forest view. “Mal, when can I get up from this sickbed and go for a wander outside? I'm feeling cooped up in here."
"When you're strong enough to stand."
"I already am,” Garrich feebly lied. Just sitting up in bed proved a monumental effort on his part. His ravening appetite, while sign of his improving health, had not yet countered the Drakenweed toxin robbing him of all strength.
Settling cross-legged on the polished floor of grained wood beside the bed of ferns, Maldoch's familiarly callous laugh mocked Garrich. “Balderdash. You couldn't lift a feather right now. Save your strength for when we head down to Illebard in a fortnight's time. It's on the coast, so the sea air will do you good."
"But I won't get the chance to look around Gwilhaire Wood."
"One tree looks pretty much like the next. I'll give you a quick tour on the way out,” promised the wizard. “Don't rush recuperating, Garrich. You had a close call. Getting back on your feet again won't happen overnight. It isn't every day a young man finds out he's not indestructible."
"Maldoch, if I didn't know any better I'd swear you actually cared."
"That plant poison must've numbed your brain. My only worry has been rustling up a last minute stand-in for your Westie bones in case you inconsiderately died on me. I don't happen to have another Goblin sympathetic to the cause of Good stuffed away in my satchel. You are a tool, nothing more to me. Replacing a broken implement at short notice is bloody inconvenient. Don't make me have to consider it again."
A sly grin creased the corner of Garrich's mouth, hurting the cheek where Prilthar's healing poultice plastered the wound left by the cruelly barbed Drakenweed dart. The cranky old magician was protesting too much. Beneath that grouchy, bearded exterior of his beat a caring heart. Maldoch himself was thawing!
"Where's J'tard?” he asked. Garrich recalled seeing nothing of the Troll since reviving.
"Bas
king in his celebrity status,” the wizard jealously spat. “He's being shown around the forest. The big lug is fascinated by thorn-less plants."
"Have you been in touch with Parny?"
"The old sauce is currently drinking Carallord dry."
"I have some catching up to do. Just what are the Mdwumps?"
"Big slugs with attitude."
"Where do they come from?"
With a creak of old bones, Maldoch heaved off the floor and crossed to the window, peering out guardedly. “What I am about to tell you doesn't go beyond these four walls,” he cautioned Garrich.
The Goblin invalid cheered up. “Are you divulging a secret?"
"Only to relieve the boredom of your recovery,” confirmed the wizard. “I won't have your mind turning to mush along with your body.
"A little over fourteen hundred years into the First Epoch, a bunch of Elves migrated their way south from Berhanth in a bit of a hurry. They were the tail end Charlies of the great expansion undertaken by the forerunners of the Fellow Races during that period. With no concept of time, Elf folk always run late. Doubtlessly making for Galinorf Bay, these Elven primitives managed to reach the western side of the Shieldrock Range before vanishing off the face of Terrath. But they didn't disappear. Shadfenn swallowed them whole."
"Where the Mdwumps got them,” supposed Garrich.
"The young idiotically presume to know it all!” carped Maldoch, peeved by the interruption. “You're way off base, smarty-pants. The Mdwumps weren't even around then."
"So what became of those Elves?"
"The swamp reshaped them into the man-slugs."
That was a bombshell for Garrich. Horrified, he croaked, “I hacked Elves to pieces."
"They used to be Elven,” amended Maldoch, casually resting his elbows on the windowsill. “The conversion happened in stages. Magic is a lot like weather. Certain enchantments have the instant oomph of a thunderbolt, while the subtle effects of other conjuring accumulates over time, much the same as a blizzard deepens snowdrifts in mountain passes. In that respect Gwilhaire Wood and Shadfenn are sister regions, the forest harboring wholesome magic, the swamp dispensing bad vibes. Such gradual contamination irreversibly warped the Berhanth Elves. Their makeover wasn't just physical, blackening hearts as well. If nothing else, Evil is thorough."
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