Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  “No!” she cried aloud, heard an answering cry within, felt the shattering of a goddess bond, and began to move.

  The Eldest of the Elder Races had a part in Crystal’s making and with Milthra’s strength she met Jason’s charge and hurled him aside.

  When she reached the bed she was already singing, throwing power into her voice regardless of what the cap would do. She rested one hand on the woman’s head and the other on her stomach and sang her an easing of pain. The change, barely a heartbeat begun, stopped. The fingers grew longer, the hair less. Then Crystal went deeper, wizard and goddess acting as one, touched the core of the wer, found the flaw, and healed it.

  The cry of a newborn blended for a moment with her song, then it continued alone.

  When Crystal raised her head, wer jammed the door, drawn by the use of power.

  “What . . .” The old wer spread his hands searching for the words.

  Crystal swayed, the place where her power had been was an aching void. The fire, the repairing of herself, and now this; she had nothing more to give. “I healed her. She controls her changes now.”

  “How? The cap . . .”

  “The cap works to prevent escape.” Her head throbbed and the places beneath the cap felt bruised. It had reacted to the power, but it hadn’t tried to stop her.

  “Why?”

  Crystal looked at the girl-child sucking lustily on her mother’s breast, squirming as her father licked her clean. “I am not like other wizards,” she told him, and tumbled into the void.

  * * *

  Lord Death stopped, head cocked as though he listened. “Lives. A number of them,” he said suddenly, waving Jago toward one of the small caves. “Hide there until I return for you.”

  Jago pulled Raulin through the arched doorway, a small portion of his mind noting that it could never have been naturally carved. “Someone’s coming,” he hissed in explanation. “Hide.”

  They pressed up against the wall where the angle was too sharp for them to be seen from the passage, packs pushed hard into the rock. They heard the questioning cries of puzzled cats first, and then the soft thud of pads running on stone. The sounds grew louder, filled their ears, then faded.

  Raulin relaxed his grip on his dagger, silently released the breath he’d been holding, and sagged against the wall. The wounds under his bandages ached. He stretched, trying to remain flexible but knowing he was stiffening up. He felt Jago still tensed beside him.

  “What is it?” he leaned over to whisper.

  A nervous smile glimmered briefly. “I started thinking about all the rock piled up above us.”

  Raulin bit back a laugh. “With all the things we have to worry about . . .” After the strange half-light of the tunnels his eyes adjusted quickly to the greater gloom of the cave. He saw the sweat sheen Jago’s face and touched his brother’s arm. “These mountains have stood for thousands of years, they’ll last a few hours more.”

  Jago nodded. He plucked at the sling holding his injured hand immobile against his chest, and forced his thoughts away from the great weight of stone they moved under. Crystal needs you. Think of Crystal. From deep in his mind came a wisp of song. He sighed and the knots in his muscles eased.

  “Hey.” Raulin leaned over one of the shadowy bundles that almost filled the cave. “Tanned hides.”

  Intrigued, Jago moved beside him. The corner of hide felt butter soft between his fingers. “Trade goods?” he guessed.

  Raulin shrugged. “Makes sense.”

  “The danger has passed. Come.”

  “He’s back?” Raulin asked, reading Jago’s reaction.

  “Yeah.” Jago tried to calm his pounding heart as he rose and turned. Lord Death stood in the entrance, the light from the passage igniting copper strands in his hair. He cast no shadow into the cave.

  “Things have changed,” said the Mother’s son, his expression unreadable. “We must hurry.”

  * * *

  “I can’t decide; are you brave or stupid? I mean, considering that you expected the cap to fry your brains.”

  Crystal tried to focus. Browns and blues swam in front of her and finally arranged themselves into a young girl with wild chestnut curls and cornflower eyes. She didn’t look much like one of the wer.

  The girl grinned.

  Pale greens swirled about in soothing patterns and Crystal realized where she was. “I’m not awake.”

  “Out cold,” agreed the girl. “Your power is slowly rebuilding but for now, you’re stuck here.”

  Crystal’s stomach spasmed. “I’m starving.”

  “You surprised? You better hope they feed you soon or, even after you regain consciousness, you’ll be mush for days.” The girl spun about. “The others can’t get this high in your head with no power to use, but I go where I want.”

  “Are you trying to get free?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You’re Eegri.” she smiled, despite the hunger, as one long-lashed lid dropped in a saucy wink.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You weren’t the one who . . .”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Eegri snorted, “I don’t do babies.” Then she looked thoughtful. “Not after the initial gamble. No, you broke Sholah loose with that stunt, shattering the remaining matrix. Geta’s still sulking, but the rest of us are rummaging about quite separately. So,” she drew her legs up and sat cross-legged on nothing, “answer my question. Brave or stupid?”

  Crystal considered it for a moment, weaving a strand of hair through her fingers. “I guess,” she said at last, “you could say I took a chance.”

  Eegri stared at her, then burst into peals of laughter. “I like you, wizard!” Her smile fell on Crystal like a benediction and a delicious smell filled the air. “You got lucky. They’re feeding you.”

  Her mouth flooding with saliva, Crystal felt herself pulled back to consciousness. “Did you do that?” she asked the fading goddess of chance.

  Eegri’s smile hung on an instant longer. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  * * *

  Crystal opened her eyes to see the ancient woman who had knelt by the birth bed. In age-twisted hands, she held a large clay bowl filled with heavy porridge. Her gray eyes, while not kind, were at least neutral.

  “You saved my granddaughter and her child,” she explained. “Eat.”

  She backed quickly away as Crystal grabbed up the bowl and began shoving handfuls of the warm food into her mouth. Then, recovering, the wer admonished sharply, “Eat slower. You’ll choke.” Male voices from the passage admonished her in turn, but she snarled them into silence as she left.

  Crystal felt the rumble of moving rock, and ignored it, concentrating on the food. The porridge only just took the edge off her hunger, but its weight was a comfort in her stomach, and when the bowl had been licked clean she felt able to look around. She was in a small cave, about eight feet square, and a single torch was jammed into a crack by the door—by the blocked door. She got up, put her palms against the stone, and pushed.

  As she expected, nothing happened. “I am going to get my strength back,” she muttered, sitting back down, “and then I am leaving. Cap or no cap.”

  * * *

  Lord Death sped down the passageway, Raulin and Jago keeping up with difficulty. “Soon we’ll come to a short passage that leads to the central cavern. Cross the passage quickly and quietly. The wer meet to decide Crystal’s fate.”

  “Meet where?” Raulin wanted to know when Jago had echoed the information.

  “Where do you think,” Lord Death said coldly without turning.

  “In the central cavern,” Jago translated.

  “Wonderful,” Raulin muttered and reached behind him for his crossbow.

  The passage was indeed short. Crossing it, quickly and quietly as instructed, the brothers could clearly hear th
e debate going on in the cavern.

  “. . . healed Beth, we let her go.”

  “And who will heal my daughter when her time comes? No! We keep the wizard chained to do our bidding as her kind once kept us!”

  “Wizards are the pain givers. Kill her!”

  “She healed Beth!”

  “But why?”

  “Wizards can’t be trusted, her reasons . . .”

  The voices faded in the distance. They ran about a hundred meters along secondary passageways until Lord Death stopped before a roughly circular boulder pushed tight against the rock wall. “She’s behind this.”

  Raulin shook his head, put his shoulder against the curve, and pushed. The boulder rocked. He bent and studied the floor. “Grooved,” he said, standing. “Can’t be moved from the inside, but the two of us should manage fine. Jago.”

  With a sound like half the mountain falling, the huge stone rolled out of the way.

  Raulin straightened up and took a deep breath through gritted teeth. He waited until the pain smoothed out of his face, then ducked into the cave, his eyes half closed as though afraid of what he’d find.

  Jago leaned a moment longer against the stone. Lucky they’re arguing too hard to hear that, he thought, following his brother through the opening. We won’t get a chance like it again.

  Raulin had caught Crystal up in his arms, ignoring his injuries as he pressed her against his chest, and covered her face with kisses. “I knew you were alive. I knew it.” But the shadows in his eyes said he’d had his doubts.

  Crystal’s fingers danced over every bit of Raulin she could reach.

  He touched the cap and his expression hardened. “Is that what they hold you with?”

  She drew his hand away, not allowing him to see how his tugging at the band sent slivers of pain into her head.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jago said softly. She turned to face him then and he felt her joy, less demonstrative than her response to Raulin, but just as deep.

  “You’re both injured. I have no power . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jago told her, wishing he could wipe the helplessness from her voice, “we have no time either. Come on.”

  The three of them stepped back out into the passageway and Crystal froze.

  “You’ve come back.”

  Lord Death smiled hesitantly at her. “I couldn’t leave you in the hands of your enemies.”

  “But . . .” She looked from Raulin to Jago.

  “I brought them to you.” When she stepped toward him, the smile vanished, and he turned away, feeling too exposed with Jago watching. “Now, I will take you out.”

  Crystal quickly hid the hurt but not before Jago saw it and vowed to have a word or two with the Mother’s son.

  They traveled as quickly as they could, tossing caution aside with all the wer accounted for in council. The air freshened, the light changed subtly, and at last they could see the silver of moonlight on snow.

  “It’s still the middle of the night,” Crystal marveled, sagging against Raulin with a sigh. “It feels like it should be days later.”

  “Well, we’ve cut days off our time,” Jago told them peering out into the night. “We’ve come out on the opposite side of the mountain.”

  Just then the faintest of howls drifted up along their trail.

  “I think,” said Raulin, propelling them out of the mountain, “you’ve been missed.”

  They fought their way down the icy slope, almost blinded by the sudden brightness. The howls grew louder. Four legs move much faster than two, especially with injuries and a long night beginning to take their toll.

  “Leave me and save yourselves!” Crystal cried as a sharp edge cut into her bootless feet. She stumbled and fell to her knees.

  “None of that,” Raulin snapped, pulling her up. “We stay together, all of us.”

  As they ran, his arm tight about her waist, she left a bloody trail on the ice.

  Jago tripped on a hidden branch and reached out to steady himself on an oddly shaped outcropping. His fingers clutched at cloth.

  “Gaaa . . .”

  “Gently, mortal, I will not hurt you.” The giant picked up Raulin and Crystal who had careened into an outstretched arm, and drew all three of them against the shelter of her body. “You are safe. There is no longer any need to hurry.”

  And then the wer were upon them.

  NINE

  Crystal buried her face against the giant’s warm side and refused to think about the wer howling around them. Her power had dropped to such a level that her bare feet actually throbbed with cold. Raulin and Jago were both wounded and she could do nothing for them. Hunger tied knots in her stomach. Her head hurt. One more thing and she’d break down and cry. She’d deal with the wer later.

  Raulin enfolded Crystal protectively in his arms. The giant still held them loosely and he felt as if they’d reached a safe harbor. Let the wer slaver and growl, he was certain that the giant could take care of them.

  Jago sagged and whimpered as his weight fell forward on the ruin of his hand. A gentle grip lifted him and settled him comfortably against a massive thigh and a soft touch along his back eased the pain. He saw his brother and Crystal safe against the giant’s other side, thanked the Mother-creator for their good fortune, and relaxed.

  The wer circled, two dozen wolves and half that number again of cats. They moved constantly, a seething wall of eyes and fangs gleaming in the moonlight, with here and there a pale flash of skin quickly clothed again in fur.

  The giant sat patiently, held their prey, and waited.

  Finally Eli padded out of the pack and shifted to his manshape.

  “You have something that belongs to us, Elder,” he called.

  “Yes,” she said, her slow, pleasant voice neither acknowledging the wer as a threat nor threatening them in turn, “I believe I do. You may come in and remove it from the wizard’s head and we shall be on our way.”

  Eli looked puzzled, then he caught sight of the cap lying deeply purple against the silver of Crystal’s hair. “Not that toy,” he snarled. “The wizard.”

  “But she can’t belong to you. One person can’t own another. If I remember correctly, that’s what your people cried out to the wizards who tried to own you.”

  “She is a wizard!” Eli almost screamed it. “The wizards kept us in torment. Created us so we would always exist in torment!” His emotions overcame him. He flowed back into wolfshape and raised his muzzle to the moon. The pack joined in.

  The giant waited silently until the echoes of the howl finished bouncing back off the mountains, then said, “What you say is true, but as this wizard had nothing to do with that and is in fact younger than a number of you I fail to see your point.”

  Another wolf rose to two legs and growled, “We could take her.”

  “You could try,” corrected the giant gently. “I wouldn’t advise it.” A quiet certainty radiated with the words, lapping over the wer, calming them. When most had stilled, she raised her voice, just a little. “I am taking these children to my camp. You may spend the night outside in the dark and the cold watching if you wish, but we will still be there in the morning. If you have anything else to say, you may say it then.”

  “We can’t just let the wizard go,” wailed a manshape of one of the cats.

  “I said, we will be there in the morning.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, snapped back to fur, and began vigorously washing a hind leg.

  “Can you mortals walk?”

  It took the brothers a second to realize that she was speaking to them.

  Raulin’s chest burned with lines of fire, but he nodded. “Yes, I can.”

  “Me too,” Jago straightened, taking elaborate care not to jar his hand. He was beginning to have fond memories of the mauling he’d take
n from the brindle, at least he’d been out through most of that.

  “Then follow in my footsteps,” she said, standing and scooping a semiconscious Crystal up in her arms. “I will always take the easiest path. Don’t worry,” she added comfortingly, ignoring the wer who scrambled out of her way, “it isn’t far.”

  They looked at each other, they looked at the wer—who appeared more confused than aggressive—and they did as they were told. Her huge footsteps were easy enough to follow, even in the uncertain moonlight. Jago estimated her height at close to twelve feet and at most only four of that was leg. As tall as she was, she actually looked taller sitting down.

  It isn’t far can be a dubious statement when uttered by a giant, but she led them only a short way down the mountain to where she’d set up her camp within a small copse of trees. In the center of the clearing a fire burned, and on the embers at the edge of the fire, just beginning to steam, sat a teapot.

  Jago started. It looked like their teapot; but theirs had been left with the sleigh on the other side of the mountain. Except—his eyes bulged a bit—wasn’t that their sleigh drawn up on the far side of the fire? And that shelter . . .

  “Uh, Raulin . . .”

  “Yeah. I see, I see.”

  The giant laid Crystal gently down on the sleigh, turned, saw the brothers’ bewilderment, and smiled. “The breezes told me where to find your equipment, so I brought it with me when I came. Now,” she squatted by the teapot and filled three enamel mugs, “drink this and shortly you may sleep.”

  Raulin stuck his nose over the mug she’d handed him, and sniffed. The painkiller from the emergency kit and something else. He took a cautious sip. Raspberries?

  “Doesn’t taste like goat-piss anymore,” Jago muttered.

  “No reason why it should,” pointed out the giant, leaving Crystal, who after a number of mouthfuls was managing on her own. “I can do nothing for your hand,” she told Jago sadly. “It is beyond my skill. But in the morning . . .”

  He nodded. “Crystal can take care of it.” That thought had kept him from screaming hysterics or black despair all night.