The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1)

by Meighan, William

“Do you think we could catch any of them sleeping tonight?” Marion offered. “That, at least, would even the odds a little.”

  “That will have to be our plan, I think,” Owen answered. “Did you notice that draw that leads from the end of these woods to the east up near the north side of the tower? The brush along it should provide us with cover, if it’s not too thick to get through quietly.”

  “I looked that over pretty closely,” Marian volunteered. “There is a short open area that we will have to cross to get into the gully, but it looked like the bottom is mostly clear, with the brush growing up the sides. We should be able to make our way within a hundred paces of the tower before we lose our cover. With luck, they should bed down near that fire and be within an easy bow shot of the end of the gully.”

  “Jack, what do you think?”

  “I still don’t like the odds, but going home without finding out what we came all this way for… Well, I guess we should try, but I don’t think Marian should come along.”

  “I’m a better shot with a bow than you are, Jack Farrell,” Marian snapped back, “and I’m smaller, more agile and just plain sneakier than either one of you. I’ll be able to move up that draw without being heard or seen, which may not be true for you two. Besides, if you think I’m staying here alone, in the woods, in the dark, when there’s gorn around, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “Okay, enough already,” Owen interjected before Jack could respond. “You get to come, but if we have to go into the tower to fight, you stay outside and watch our backs. Let’s try to get some sleep. There’s a gibbous moon tonight. Let’s use the last of it to make our way through the gully, then attack before dawn as soon as there is enough light to be sure of our targets.”

  Jack once again took first watch, while Marian and Owen rolled up in their blankets to try to sleep. They talked quietly for a while, then as the last light left the sky, rolled over and closed their eyes. Owen found himself lying on the Old Wizards headpiece, so he eased it from his pocket and rather than putting it in his pack, held it with his left hand against his chest. It felt a little warmer than you would expect a lump of bronze to feel on a cold autumn night, but then his thigh had probably kept it warm in his pocket. Thinking of Aaron and Sarah Murray, in cruel captivity somewhere ahead of them, he finally began to doze.

  When Owen opened his eyes, he was looking out over the little valley towards the old watchtower. The gorns’ fire there had burned down, but he could still easily see two figures sitting near it. A movement about five paces to the left revealed a third standing facing a bush. He could not see the fourth; he had probably taken up watch in the tower.

  Silently, he opened his broad wings and dropped from the tree. He flew low towards the tower, angling toward the gully that they planned to use later that night. Marian had been correct. The bottom of the wash was sandy, with thin bushes growing along the sides. The bushes had lost their leaves for the coming winter, but they should still provide them with enough cover to approach the tower unseen if they were careful.

  Owen gained altitude once he was west of the tower, and soared around it once from a safe distance. As he remembered from the previous night, part of the rampart on the southern side had fallen, but the structure still looked basically sound. It was built tall and round with a narrow stone staircase that wound part way up the outside starting on the western side to a door opening to the south that was set at about twice the height of a tall man. The remnants of the door had been pushed inward and were sagging on their hinges. Owen reasoned that the thin stairway and the high door would make it difficult to assault the tower against an alert defense. There was no room to swing a battering ram from the narrow landing before the door, and only one man at the most would be able to assault the old oaken door with an axe. Heavy stones or hot oil dropped from above would make that axeman’s task more than perilous.

  Owen circled the tower one more time, but could not see any sign of the fourth sentry. Downwind of the tower he caught the faint but distinct smell of fresh blood, probably from the game that the gorn had butchered for their dinner. After his lesson of the previous night, Owen dared not land on the battlement wall, and he also did not want to alert the gorn by loitering too long near the tower, so veering off to the west, he took up the trail of the villagers and their guards.

  Owen flew for several leagues, following the path as it wound up into the Grey Hills until he saw what he was looking for. There, laid out much as it had been the night before, was the enemy’s camp with the villagers huddled into small groups in the middle. They had not traveled as far this day as they had on the first. The terrain had been rougher, had climbed more, and they must have been exhausted from the impressive pace that they had maintained during the days before. Had it not been for the watchtower, Owen suspected, he and his friends would have closed the gap substantially before having to stop for the night. As he circled the camp from a safe distance, trying unsuccessfully to get a glimpse of Sarah, Owen deeply regretted that delay.

  As he had the night before, Owen continued to the west to see if he could determine where the invaders were headed. Up and into the west he flew, the snow topped mountains of the West Wall looming up ahead. About an hour beyond the camp he suddenly saw a great walled castle on a granite outcropping with a commanding view of the surrounding valleys and the majestic mountains rising steeply to the west. At first, he seemed to see flags and pennants flying from the massive outer walls and the turrets of the central keep, and men in strange uniforms with great halberds on their shoulders marching in patrol on the ramparts, but as he grew closer these apparitions faded and he realized that he was looking at the stone ruins of a fortress long abandoned. Like the watchtower, it too had suffered from centuries of neglect. The great wooden gates had sagged, stones had fallen, and vines had grown over much of the walls. Owen landed on the roof of the gatehouse and peered into the dark and deserted ruin. It once had been vast and powerful, he thought. The decay and lost glory saddened him.

  Gazing toward the West Wall, Owen could see a pass in the foothills leading to a deep cleft in the mountains. ‘McDonald’s Break,’ he thought. ‘Could the gorn have found a way past the Wizard’s Moat?’ Taking wing, Owen flew powerfully toward the Break and the wide lake at its mouth. The Wizard’s Moat lay calm and black beneath the moonlit sky. It filled a large valley, with the cliffs of the West Wall dropping straight down into it on the western side. Several large streams cascaded into it from the Wall, and a small river fed it from the north. A vast ancient landslide had damned the river to the south, causing it to fill the valley until it overflowed to the east and south.

  Flying high over the lake, Owen could see a long and very narrow stone bridge coming out of the Break and arching high over the lake. Owen could not understand how such a bridge could have been constructed, but this must be how the gorn had crossed the Moat. The crossing would have been perilous; the bridge was high and very narrow, with no guardrail or handhold to provide comfort to those who used it. From the top of the arch, a fall to the lake below would likely be fatal.

  Owen followed the span on toward the pass. He noticed that it widened some after its zenith, so that while it was barely wide enough for one man to use all along the eastern half, four men could have walked onto it abreast where it left the western shore. Suddenly, on the far side, Owen spotted a robed man standing at the end of the bridge watching him approach. Startled, Owen wheeled violently to his left and dove under the arch of the bridge as the robed figure raised his hand to clutch the air in his direction.

  In the instant before Owen was able to put the bridge between himself and the robed figure, he felt a burning in his breast so intense that he almost blacked out with the pain. It felt like someone had reached into his chest and was yanking his heart out between his ribs—not just his heart, but his very soul seemed to be torn and shredded. A moment later, the contact vanished, leaving only the nearly overwhelming memory of the pain.

  Disor
iented and groggy, Owen managed to regain control before tumbling into the cold black waters below, and flew low under the bridge as fast as possible toward the eastern shore, keeping the span between himself and the threat behind him.

  Suddenly, something huge loomed up from the depths below, and with a silver flash of water in moonlight, a long pale tentacle whipped out of the black lake in his direction. Owen dodged franticly to the right, and clawed at the air for altitude. Instantly, a second gray arm lashed up in front of him, and he dodged back to the left just brushing the slimy snake-like creature with his pinfeathers. In a panic, dodging wildly and climbing, Owen barely managed to elude several more powerful strikes until he was able to climb high enough and the attack ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

  Exhausted, Owen managed to reach the eastern shore, where he crashed into the branches of a tall fir, clutched fiercely onto a broad branch and perched trying to regain his courage and his breath. His feathers were wet and disordered, and his wings drooped loosely down as he struggled to calm himself.

  ‘Why was he still here?’ Owen wondered. The previous night, when he had been attacked by the gorn in the watchtower, he had almost instantly found himself back in his own body. He had ranged further this night; could it be the additional separation? Or had the dark sorcerer at the other end of the bridge, for such it must have been, done something that prevented his instant return? Owen hoped that it was the former. The latter explanation was too terrifying to contemplate.

  When he had regained his breath and his nerve, Owen abandoned his perch and headed back to the east. Still shaken, he made full use of the foothills’ thermals and breezes to ease his flight, and swept well north of the enemy camp on his return flight. As he approached the tower, he decided to make one more circuit to make sure that things were still as he had earlier seen them.

  Two gorn were now stretched out on the ground, apparently sleeping. The third was nowhere in sight, and had probably joined the fourth in the old tower.

  Deeply weary from the withdrawal of the adrenalin surge he’d experienced from the attack at the Wizard’s Moat, Owen flew unsteadily into the copse where he and his friends were camped. He was hoping that if he perched in a tree near his human body and closed his eyes, he would somehow be able to make the transition back.

  As he approached the camp, far back in the trees, he heard a slight furtive movement off to his left. Banking that way, Owen saw his sister leaning against a tree standing her watch. He heard another faint scuffing noise coming from just behind Marian and to her right. Gliding silently through the treetops, Owen was suddenly able to see its source. There, moving in on Marian from behind was the missing gorn.

  Owen let out a loud screech, and dove at the stalking gorn. With his long sharp talons, he tore out the gorn’s right eye and scored two deep gouges across his forehead. Surprised, and in sudden pain, the gorn dropped the mace he had been lifting to strike at Marian and batted wildly at the sky with his long arms, but Owen was already climbing away to turn back for another pass.

  Marian, startled by the sudden screech of the owl, jerked around in time to see a huge beast close behind her flailing at a large great-horned owl as it swooped back into the sky. In the moonlight through the trees, Marian suddenly realized that she was face to face with her first gorn, and that somehow the attack had already begun.

  Terrified, but almost in reflex, Marian snatched her knife from its sheath, and launched herself at the gorn just as the owl wheeled back down in another dive. Marian struck for the center of the gorn’s chest, but was slapped to the ground by a powerful fist just as the owl once again raked across the gorn’s head, tearing open an ear in its passing.

  Wounded and bewildered, the gorn turned his one remaining eye from Marian and searched the skies for the crazed spirit-bird that was attacking him. The air had been driven from Marian’s lungs when she was smashed to the ground, and she was gasping to regain it. In a near stupor, she slashed blindly out with her knife at the back of the gorns powerful leg, severing the tendons just below the knee.

  With a grunt, the gorn toppled back on top of Marian, just as the owl once again swooped past, striking fiercely at the space where the gorn’s head had just been. Once again, Marian found herself unable to breath and struggled in panic to get some air into her lungs. Jack, who’d been startled awake out of a sound sleep by the ruckus ran over with his staff, and with all of his might swung it down striking the gorn in the forehead just above the ridges of his eyes. There was a crack as his skull gave way, and the gorn went completely limp on top of Marian who was trapped under the oppressive weight of her foul smelling enemy.

  “Roll him off of me,” Marian was finally able to gasp, and Jack used his staff to lever her out from under the large hairy body.

  Owen, seeing that the fight was over made a wide circle among the trees to check for any additional stalkers, then widened his loop to see if the gorn at the tower had been alarmed by the noise. The two by the dying campfire still seemed to be asleep, and there was no sign of the fourth who had been in the tower earlier that night. Probably, he was still there. ‘He must have heard the owl’s initial screech’, Owen reasoned, ‘but the gorn had never called for help, and Marian had never had a chance to shout an alarm. Given the distance and the trees, there is a good chance that the brief battle went completely unnoticed by the sentry in the tower. If not, then we’re likely all about to die.’

  Owen woke more than a little disoriented as Jack shook him by the shoulder. “Jeez, Owen,” Jack whispered, “how could you sleep through that attack? Lucky for us there was only one gorn and we didn’t need your help to finish it.”

  “Yes, lucky,” Owen muttered under his breath. “Gorn?” he whispered to Jack. “Have we been attacked?” he asked sitting up. He could feel the brass headpiece hot in his left hand, but he kept it concealed beneath the blanket. His headache pulsed with each beat of his heart, and he closed his eyes to settle his nausea.

  “Boy, Owen,” Marian whispered excitedly, “you really missed it. A huge gorn tried to sneak up on us while I was standing watch. He almost did it too, but I caught him just in time and managed to hamstring him with my knife. Then Jack came and finished him off. You should have seen it. I can’t believe that you slept through the whole thing.”

  “Neither can I,” Owen answered, the pain throbbing behind his eyes was beginning to abate. “Did either of you check around to see if this gorn brought any of his friends with him?”

  A panicked look came into their eyes, and Marian and Jack snapped their heads around trying to look in all directions at once for additional gorn warriors sneaking up on them through the dark shadows under the trees. The excitement of a successful battle was quickly wearing off, leaving a growing terror in its wake.

  “Never mind,” Owen whispered. “I expect that if there were two of them, the second would already be on us. Let’s break camp though, just in case, and start heading for the gully. We’d better finish this before those other gorn start to wonder why their friend didn’t return.”

  “Do you think that it is safe to go ahead with our plans now?” Jack asked. “I mean do you think that we alerted the gorn in the watchtower with our fight?”

  “I don’t think that it’s likely,” Owen answered, rubbing at his temples. “If you didn’t wake me, you probably didn’t disturb them way across the valley. Besides, it’s either that or run for it before they discover the body and raise the alarm.”

  “On the good side, there is now one less gorn to worry about when we reach the tower,” Marian offered, and they began to quickly roll up their blankets and tie them to their packs.

  Taking only what weapons they had with them and leaving the rest of their gear with the horses, they began to work their way through the woods toward the gully. Marian picked up the gorn’s mace along the way. It had six sharpened metal blades embedded in it, and was really much too heavy for her to wield effectively, but at close quarters, she reasoned, it would be b
etter than the sling that she carried.

  Jack was armed with a bow, and Owen had his bow across his back and his staff in hand. All three carried stout knives at their belts, normally used for skinning game and other chores around the farm.

  At the edge of the wood, they stopped behind the last trees and carefully examined the scene before them. Nothing was moving. The tower stood dark and still against the skyline. They could see the dying embers of the fire that the gorn had used earlier, but it was too dark in the shadow of the tower to tell if there were any still sleeping there.

  After a long pause, Owen motioned with his hand, and in a low crouch they moved quickly across the open space and entered the gully. The gully itself was wide enough for three big men to walk abreast, and from its shallow entry, the sides quickly rose to well over Owen’s head. The bottom was flat and sandy, barren except for an occasional Devil’s Thorn bush. Thorn bushes and scrub oak grew on the sides of the gully, overhanging it a little and providing them some cover from above.

  They kept to the side closest to the tower, and crouching moved down the gully as silently as possible. The moon was approaching the West Wall putting the bottom of the gully into deep shadow, but still allowing them enough light to avoid the scattered thorn bushes and rocks jutting out of the sand. Occasionally, they would get brief glimpses of the top of the tower, silhouetted against the star-filled sky through a tangle of thorns, but most of their progress was made without any reference points outside of the gully. Marian collected a few stones as they went along that were just the right size and shape for her sling. These she kept in a leather pouch at her belt.

  Half way to the tower, Owen startled a covey of quail that burst out of the bushes before him and flew down the valley. The noise of their rising sounded like thunder compared to the surrounding silence, and they froze in place for a long moment, straining to hear any reaction from the lookouts ahead. After a long pause, during which all they could hear was the hammering of their hearts, Owen slowly and tentatively resumed his movement forward.