The Fiend and the Forge

by Henry H. Neff

  Max gasped as not one but two pairs of eyes were illuminated.

  “He’s better than okay,” Julie laughed. “He’s in love!”

  For a full minute, Max gazed with quiet pleasure at a sight he thought he’d never see. Next to Nick perched a second lymrill, a silvery female who shone as fine and bright as the moon.

  ~8~

  HERE BE MONSTERS

  Descending the tree headfirst, Nick leaped the final ten feet and landed with a thump to circle Max and Julie. Smoothing his quills into a gleaming pelt, Nick brushed against them with feline affection, pausing occasionally to peer up at the female who still lingered amid the branches. Mewling, Nick stood on his hind legs and hooked his claws into Max’s sweater, ripping the wool.

  “Hey!” said Max, swatting vainly at the sturdy creature.

  “I think he’s telling her that you’re family,” laughed Julie.

  The female lymrill mewled in kind and stirred from her perch to ease cautiously down the trunk. While the female sniffed at Max, Julie shone the light upon her, illuminating a slim, sleek form that suggested something like a ferret. Unlike Nick’s coppery quills, the female’s brightened from bronze at the base to silver at the tips. The needle-sharp tips alternately bristled and smoothed as she acclimated to the humans. Her amber eyes peered up at Max as she sank back on her haunches and issued a low growl, shaking her thick tail like a maraca, as Nick had done years before. Max braced himself for what he guessed would come next.

  Sure enough, the sleek head darted forward and nipped his outstretched hand, drawing blood.

  “Ouch,” muttered Max, shaking his injured hand.

  “Why’d she do that?” asked Julie, coming closer to examine the bleeding wound.

  “To let me know she can,” Max replied. “Nick did the same thing when he chose me.”

  “That looks pretty bad,” said Julie, gathering wild rose hips from a thicket. Crushing the bulbs between her hands, she began to whisper a mild healing spell when Max stopped her.

  “It’s okay,” he said, holding up his hand and wiggling his fingers. “All better.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Julie, blinking as she inspected his hand by the lantern. “There were at least four deep punctures. How did you do that?”

  “What can I say?” quipped Max, petting the female lymrill, who now gnawed placidly on his shoelace. “I’m a fast healer.”

  Julie’s eyes fell upon the pale scar that traced a thin, straight path from Max’s cheekbone to his chin.

  “Why didn’t that one heal?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he responded, shrugging. “I got it while I was training in the Sidh. Scathach caught me when I was slacking.”

  “And who’s Scathach?” asked Julie, raising her eyebrows.

  “A woman,” replied Max. “She lived at Rodrubân.”

  “How old was she?” asked Julie.

  “No clue,” said Max, laughing. “Time doesn’t work the same way there. She looks young, but she could be older than YaYa. She’s been training warriors for ages.”

  “Hmmm,” said Julie, stooping to stroke Nick, who had been pacing about her feet. When she spoke next, her voice was unnervingly casual. “Was she pretty?”

  “Very,” replied Max, reflecting on his last glimpse of the raven-haired woman standing atop Rodrubân’s ivory towers. Even in silhouette, Scathach’s strength and sorrow were evident in subtleties of poise and posture. “Beautiful, even.”

  An awkward, lingering silence ensued. At length, Julie sighed and pulled Nick’s head close to her own, kissing his otterlike muzzle. She laughed.

  “Really, Max,” she said. “You should spend more time with Sir Alistair. If you don’t have the good sense to lie and declare her a shambling, wheezy thing, then you should simply call her ‘cute.’ Cute is manageable. Cute is nonthreatening.”

  “Point taken,” said Max. He stroked the female lymrill’s whiskers and sought to change the subject. “I guess we need to give you a name. What should we name her, Julie? I think we should call her Eve—you know, since she might be the only female around.”

  “Nick and Eve?” muttered Julie. “I think not. My vote is for Circe.”

  Scouring his memory, Max hit upon the Odyssey and remembered its isle-dwelling sorceress—the one who transformed men into swine. He wondered whether Julie was trying to tell him something.

  “Fine,” he said evenly. “Circe it is.”

  As if taking to her new name, Circe nuzzled Max and curled into a ball, ignoring Nick, who had ventured over to nibble at her flattened ear.

  “So,” Julie said, “anything else you want to tell me about this Scathach? Better now than tomorrow at lunch with all my friends prowling about for gossip.”

  “I’m not talking about Scathach or anything that happened in the Sidh,” said Max firmly. “And I can’t talk about anything tomorrow, anyway. I’m leaving at sunrise for a few weeks.”

  Julie stood in the golden lantern light, plucking at a slender bangle. “You’re joking,” she said, her voice barely rising above a whisper.

  “I wish I was,” said Max. “The Red Branch is heading out to explore Rowan’s territory. We can’t be sure any of the old maps are accurate. Everything’s uncharted now.”

  “But what about school?” protested Julie with a disbelieving laugh. “What about the class you’re teaching?”

  “I’ll catch up when I get back,” replied Max.

  Biting her lip, Julie’s eyes darted about as though searching for possible loopholes. When they finally met his, their light had dimmed.

  “And when did you plan to tell me this?” she asked stiffly.

  “Tonight,” said Max softly. “Don’t be angry. I just found out myself.”

  “I see.” Julie hugged him. Her cheek was warm and wet, and it lingered a moment against his until finally she broke away. “Should I leave the lantern with you?”

  “No,” said Max. “You take it.”

  She nodded and walked away with the lantern dangling at her side. Its warm yellow light receded until it passed beyond a stand of aspen and finally disappeared. Kneeling, Max held Nick and Circe close and simply listened to the forest. The moon was high, the night was full, and the lymrills paced with hunger.

  “Happy hunting, you two,” he muttered. Emptying his pockets, he left several small ingots of iron on the dewy grass and strode up into the hills, where the trees thinned to reveal a broad sweep of the plain below.

  By sunrise, Max was seated on a stool in Rowan’s main kitchen, stirring his oatmeal and gazing forlornly at the coffee mug that Scott McDaniels had placed before him.

  “If you can wait a few minutes, there’ll be fresh milk,” his father said, rinsing his hands in a basin of wash water. He sighed and sank heavily onto the opposite stool, glancing at a handwritten list of the day’s recipes. A pantry door closed behind Max, and he turned to see Bob lumber out, hefting a sack of barley. Apart from his injuries, the ogre looked haggard, and Max guessed that he had heard all about Mum’s and Bellagrog’s troubles. The ogre rumbled hello, but squeezed past into the inner kitchens and closed the door behind him.

  “Is Bob okay?” asked Max.

  “Oh, he’s all right,” replied Mr. McDaniels, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Worried about Mum. Of course, we’ll be short-handed without the hags, but we’ll manage—plenty of applications to work in the kitchens. Everyone’s eager to earn their bit of gold now that everything’s gonna cost ’em.”

  “You’re charging now for food and stuff?” asked Max.

  “We will be,” replied Mr. McDaniels. “The farmers can’t work for free, Max. They need money to buy tools and clothes and everything else. We do, too.”

  “How much for the coffee?” asked Max with a weary grin.

  “It’s on me, moneybags,” said Mr. McDaniels.

  “I thought you were saving up to buy me a car,” Max joked.

  “What the heck is a car?” asked his father, looking u
p. “Is it expensive?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Max, his smile fading. “Forget about it. Anyway, I need your advice about Julie. Do you think she was breaking up with me?”

  “Nope,” said his father. “But she might be considering it after you just let her go off alone.”

  “But I thought she wanted to be alone.”

  “No,” mused his father. “She wanted you to go after her. She wanted you to show that you cared about her feelings and that you’ll miss her these next few weeks.”

  “Well, it’s too late now,” said Max, glancing at the morning sun peeking through the windows. “Why couldn’t she just say what she meant? Why couldn’t she be direct?”

  “She was being direct,” chuckled Mr. McDaniels. “She was just speaking a different language. Girls and boys often do. Anyway, she’s not the only one who’ll miss you, kiddo.”

  “I know—I’ll miss you, too. Will you be all right?” asked Max.

  His father managed a “sure, sure” as he creaked up and arranged clean coffee mugs on a tray to be taken out into the dining hall. Fishing for his wallet, Mr. McDaniels pressed something into Max’s hand. It was a small, blank piece of paper, cracked and bent as though it had been handled many times.

  “I’ll be fine,” rumbled his father. “By now I’m used to you disappearing out into the blue. But I have a favor to ask while you’re out on your expedition.”

  “What’s that?” asked Max, still studying the blank paper.

  “If you happen to find a pretty spot—a tree or a little hill by a lake—would you bury this for me?”

  “Sure,” replied Max, “but what is it?”

  “A photo of your mother,” explained Mr. McDaniels. “This is the last one to fade. Got none left now, and it’s torture plain and simple to hold on to them. They’re all blank and white like Bryn never even existed. I’ve gotten rid of the others, but I want the last to be somewhere out in the world, sleeping somewhere nice. Can you do that for me?”

  “Of course, Dad.”

  The two said their goodbyes, and Max took the faded photograph of his mother, wrapping the paper in linen and slipping it inside his woolen coat.

  Minutes later, Max had slung his pack over his shoulder and walked out the Manse’s front doors. Waiting beneath the rowan trees, near the fountain, were a dozen saddled horses stamping the morning dew from their hooves. Cooper sat astride a champing Appaloosa and held the reins of a glossy black Arabian.

  Hurrying down the steps, Max nodded to the Red Branch and began tying his pack to the Arabian’s saddle. The others returned his greeting, but it was not a talkative crew. The lone exception was Xiùmĕi, a wrinkled Chinese dumpling of a woman with a grandmotherly face that utterly belied the tales that Max had heard of her burning British opium ships, assassinating rival warlords, and driving a particularly lawless clan of vampires from her native province. She rocked playfully in her saddle, her belly plump with age, and jested with her immediate neighbors, who could not help but smile.

  Once Max had mounted up, the Red Branch followed Cooper into the thick woods along the school’s southern border. There, they came upon an imposing gatehouse of white stone that was set into a wall some fifty feet high. Cooper called up to the guards—a pair of Mystics peering from a latticed window—and the Red Branch waited as Rowan’s new gates were opened for the very first time. The gates swung inward, spilling bits of spoil and ivy and revealing the warding spells that David had engraved into every beam, band, and rivet of its exterior. With a groan, the gates continued their slow, grinding progress.

  “What’s out there?” Max whispered.

  “Diyu?” Xiùmĕi chuckled, tapping Max’s leg with a garlanded sword. “Acheron, maybe? My guess is trees.”

  Max smiled, but his heart beat faster as the gates opened. He felt a quickening surge of dread and, for just a moment, imagined that there was nothing beyond Rowan’s gates—just a vast abyss that stretched on forever.

  “I wish you were coming with me, young Hound,” chuckled Xiùmĕi, patting Max’s horse. “My sword arm is not as strong as once she was.”

  “We’re only to observe and report,” said Max, trying to comfort her.

  “Tell that to the Enemy,” she replied, loosening the razor-edged jiang in its scabbard.

  Max saw that Xiùmĕi was right—beyond Rowan’s threshold were no damned souls or proverbial lakes of fire, but merely a muted forest thickly carpeted with mist. The path from Rowan’s campus came to an abrupt end once it reached the threshold of the gates. Beyond, all was wilderness.

  This held true well past the moment their horses whinnied and nosed their way across the threshold and began the slow, clopping walk west toward Rowan Township. As Max’s Arabian picked its way through the deep grass and flowered knolls, he sat up in the stirrups, straining for a glimpse of the clapboard church or the Grove, a cozy restaurant perched atop the hill that overlooked the town from the southeast.

  But no such glimpses were to be had. The forest continued, uninterrupted, for as far as Max could see. The Red Branch rode slowly, tentatively, the horses’ hooves carving wispy trails through the cool mist, which filled in behind them, leaving a white veil in their wake. But this was no haunted wood from fairy tales; squirrels leaped from branches, and birds issued a chorus of calls as the bundled crew picked its way among whatever paths allowed a passage through the bent, ancient trees.

  After ten minutes, Max saw that Cooper had circled his Appaloosa around a small clearing clustered with violet and ivy. The Agent tugged at the reins and swung himself off the horse. Digging through the underbrush, he cocked his head and squinted at something before calling the others over.

  “Anyone recognize this?” he asked, gesturing at a sharp gray shard of stone poking from the soil.

  No one responded until a youngish man with auburn mutton-chops laughed and poked at the stone with a spike-topped ax.

  “Why, that’s the sword from the statue in the town commons!”

  “Atta boy, Danny,” said Cooper, scratching distractedly at his cap. “Don’t bode well, sorry to say. Remember how tall this statue was? And the patisserie should have been”—the Agent gazed around and then turned on his heel to point decisively at a thick grove of ash trees—“there. We’re smack in the middle of town, but it’s been … swallowed.”

  Max’s spirits sank. He had suspected this—dreaded this—but had nevertheless harbored a slim hope that Rowan’s quarantine had just been a paranoid measure. He had hoped in vain.

  “All right,” said Cooper, remounting the Appaloosa. “Ben and Natasha will stay here and examine the site. The rest ride on as assigned. See you ’fore Samhain.”

  Beckoning to Max, Cooper spurred his horse on at a fearsome pace through the woods, weaving through the trees with a precision that Max—an excellent horseman in his own right—found difficult to match. Yet he kept up as they dipped and wove their way through the forest until the trees thinned and opened onto a meadow dotted with hazel and honeysuckle.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Cooper caught his breath, which fogged in the air as he approximated the distance they had traveled. Reaching into his pack, the Agent procured a thick packet of tan parchment and unfolded it.

  “God bless ’em,” he muttered, scanning the document. “It works—even at a full gallop.”

  Panting and patting his horse, Max leaned over and peered at the edge of the parchment, which displayed a geographic record of the territory they had covered, right down to the lightning-split oak that stood alone in the clearing. Their progress had been inked upon the Mystic scroll with all the art and science of a master cartographer. Spurring his horse, Cooper set them on a new course that veered to the southeast.

  Like their wondrous map, the land unfolded before them—mile after mile of rocky coastline and rolling forest bearing no trace of human habitation. They rode in silence, each scouring a different horizon for evidence of man, monster, or the Enemy. From what Max could tell, Rowan rep
resented the only outpost of civilization in this corner of the world. It was a bleak, lonely thought.

  For the next week, the duo rode on, and their map came to resemble those of Cortés or Cabot. Massachusetts Bay yielded nothing of note; there were no indications of Boston or of any human habitation whatsoever. Examining the map, Cooper steered them to the west, and for days Max played a game where he sought to catch his shadow as the sun rose behind them and turned the switchback grass to gold.

  As the days passed, the air grew colder, and most mornings found Max shivering as he washed his face with icy water and prepared for the day’s journey. Given Cooper’s habitual silence, Max entertained himself at night by trying to draw the many creatures he had seen. He’d sketched birds and deer, squirrels, and even a young black bear that had paused at their passing, nosing the air before crashing off through the underbrush.

  They traveled west up into mountains, through tall forests of spruce, and across streams so bitingly cold that the horses refused to drink. Making camp one evening on a mountainous slope, Max borrowed Cooper’s bow to search for game to replace their stores, which were becoming tough. He walked along the mountainside, his eyes adjusting quickly to the deepening dusk, searching for suitable quarry.

  Game was abundant, and Max found a choice target within the hour. A whitetail buck stood grazing upon hawthorn. Oblivious to its danger, the deer presented its profile and chewed its supper with a staid, quiet expression while Max notched an arrow and drew the bowstring to his ear. The arrow’s flight was straight and true, striking the deer just above the heart and dropping it before it could take a second step.

  Lowering his bow, Max crossed to where the buck had fallen and checked to ensure that it was dead. Removing the arrow, he set about field dressing the animal, removing its organs and cleaning the meat before he would carry what was needed back to camp. Max worked efficiently, taking a certain satisfaction from the idea that other animals and insects would use what he could not. Gazing west across the valley, Max saw the autumn trees blaze in a final flash of red and gold as the sun dipped below the opposing ridge and the landscape fell into twilight. Wiping his hands clean on the grass, Max shouldered the deer and turned to make the steep, slow walk back to camp.