Black Wizards

by Douglas Niles

  “Still no sign of a sail,” said Daryth. “I guess this puts us about where we were this morning.”

  “Not exactly,” said Tristan. “I’ve got the Sword of Cymrych Hugh again!”

  He debated telling them of the prophecy of the dead queen, but a look at Pontswain’s suspicious face told him he should not. Perhaps later he would tell Daryth.

  “Master, we must discuss a problem.”

  “Must we discuss it now, Kryphon? I am very tired. His Majesty was most petulant today.”

  Cyndre turned from the mirror to regard Kryphon. The master of the council had been gazing at an undersea setting. Kryphon watched the greenish image of a pale, luminescent city slowly fade from sight. He saw several fishlike figures, carrying weapons, drift lazily past the mirror before the picture disappeared.

  “It could have the gravest consequences for us all, master.” Kryphon spoke in a rush. “Alexei has been disloyal.”

  “You would condemn a brother wizard, Kryphon? I am surprised at you.”

  “The charge is justified! He tried to convince Doric that you have been manipulated by the cleric. Fortunately, she spoke to me immediately after the discussion. I wasted no time in seeking you!”

  “Are you certain of this? Is Doric telling the truth?”

  Kryphon nodded vigorously. “I placed her under a charm spell as she spoke, and she told me the truth. She would have babbled all night if I hadn’t finally put her to sleep.”

  Cyndre tapped his chin in thought. “You have done well,” he said at last. “I fear our comrade Alexei is lost to us. We can but see that his loss causes us no damage.”

  “Is Razfallow the solution?”

  “No, Kryphon. I have other plans for the assassin. But we can afford to be patient in the matter of Alexei. We shall wait. He will do nothing for some time. Alexei is not a man of action. But our time will come. When the cleric returns from his mission to Gwynneth, he will find Alexei waiting for him, ready to offer his blood as the tears of Bhaal.”

  Robyn walked hesitantly toward the pond. She had replaced her torn gown with a leather jerkin. “I can’t kill him!” she repeated to herself. For once, her teacher had asked her to do something that she could not reconcile with her faith. Or was this some kind of test? Did Genna seek to examine her devotion to the goddess, her obedience? “I don’t care!” she told herself angrily. “I can’t kill him!”

  But neither could she allow Acorn to remain in the grove. No other possibility even entered her mind. The man’s look of stark madness—his clutching, greedy hands—stuck vividly in her memory and sent a shiver down her spine. Fortunately, her druid spell had been able to stop him.

  She made up her mind to expel him from the grove, sending him away with a command never to return. It was not what her teacher had commanded her to do, but she could not bring herself to slay him. Evil, Genna had called him—and he was. Still, Robyn felt that he was not entirely responsible for his actions.

  She crossed the garden and moved among the great oaks, nearing the pond. As she passed the place where she had been tearing up the vines weeks earlier, she noticed that the stout stick she had used to pry the vines now lay beside the sturdy trunk. Feeling vaguely uneasy, she picked it up.

  She wished for Tristan’s presence with a sudden, surprising intensity. The prince, she knew, would have had no difficulty enforcing Genna’s order.

  She emerged from the oaks, expecting to see Acorn still frozen upon the riverbank. But the stranger was gone.

  Her uneasiness grew into worry as she stepped from between the huge trees. She moved carefully along the grassy bank, looking at the ground for signs of his departure. The riverbank here was a narrow strip of field, bordered by the river on one side and thick undergrowth on the other. The river was about forty feet wide and three feet deep. Its crystalline waters, racing over colorful stones, formed the southern border of the Great Druid’s grove.

  Suddenly she heard movement in the undergrowth and whirled to see Acorn lunging toward her with a crazed gleam in his eyes. He cackled unintelligibly as he moved far faster than his feeble appearance suggested possible.

  She lifted the stick and chanted the single word again.

  “Stop!”

  Acorn did stop, but not from any effect of her spell. Instead, the madman stomped his feet and howled with laughter. Then he became very quiet, peering at Robyn with intense concentration.

  His look was the most frightening thing she had ever seen.

  When he began to mumble words that sounded like spellcasting, her fright turned to sheer terror. Her mouth fell open. But Acorn couldn’t cast spells—or could he? What did his words mean?

  And then she understood that he commanded druidic magic, as upon Acorn’s final word, a buzzing swarm of insects hummed from his hand to cluster about her on the riverbank. Robyn felt a fiery stinger lash into her cheek as more of the creatures landed upon her, seeking every patch of exposed skin. The sound of the swarm was a droning so loud that it seemed certain to drive her mad.

  She suppressed an urge to scream—she dared not open her mouth. Instead she turned to run awkwardly to the stream. Her eyes were tightly shut as she flung herself headlong into the cool water. She forced herself to stay underwater, swimming downstream for as long as she could hold her breath. When she finally burst to the surface, she saw that the mass of insects was gradually swarming across the river, out of the Great Druid’s grove. The pain from her stings slowly subsided, but her skin still burned.

  A small portion of the swarm broke toward her as she emerged from the water, but she cast a simple spell of protection, making a rapid gesture about herself. The wasps stormed forward angrily, but then buzzed in a circle around her, unable to close through the magical barrier she had raised against them.

  Acorn was already looking for her, giggling and staggering along the riverbank. Robyn splashed toward shore, hoping to get out of the water before he reached her.

  The feeble-minded wildman paused again, and again Robyn felt that intense concentration that could only mean he was preparing to cast a spell. Crawling onto the riverbank, soaking wet and gasping, she felt very vulnerable.

  She grabbed a root to pull herself up, and suddenly it squirmed in her grasp. The end of the root lashed upward, growing eyes and long fangs. She jerked back just before the undoubtedly venomous spell-cast snake struck. The snake’s fangs embedded themselves in the soft loam as she snatched her hand away.

  More snakes slithered toward her from a tangle that had, before Acorn’s spell, contained only dry sticks. She sensed the serpents closing in from all sides. She paused, pulling a tiny sprig of mistletoe from her belt, and chanted a few words very softly as she crushed the plant to dust. She felt the aura surround her, and she knew that she had become completely invisible to the snakes and to all other animals of the natural world. The creatures writhed past, and her stomach knotted as she saw several forked tongues flick forth to seek her.

  The madman still saw the young druid before him, but he also saw that the snakes could not find her. His carefully marshaled discipline—that self-control that had allowed him to recall powers he had long kept buried—began to crumble under the frustration of the thwarted attacks.

  Abruptly, he howled in rage and charged toward Robyn, his fingers outstretched, clutching for her throat. His howl gave way to an equally inarticulate cackle as he reached her.

  Robyn saw the man charge, and she seized a stout stick with both hands. Raising it high, she swung it like an axe at the madman. She had never hit anything so hard in her life!

  She felt the shock of his broken neck travel through the stick to her wrists and arms. He dropped without a sound, his head drooping grotesquely over his right shoulder.

  Robyn’s whole body shook. She staggered backward and sat down heavily, feeling sick. Acorn’s eyes stared at her from his unnaturally bent head, and she watched them slowly grow dull.

  But the power of the goddess had flowed through her, and
from her, and her own strength had not been expended. Her shaking stopped, and she walked over to the body.

  Acorn was unquestionably dead. His skin was already pale, and his head lay at that absurd angle. Still she knelt and listened for breathing, felt for a pulse. He was dead.

  Then she noticed his pouch.

  She had forgotten about the tattered wrap and its treasured contents in the time Acorn had been with her. But now she vividly recalled his fear when she had reached for it. Robyn reached for the ragged sack again and pulled the drawstring free. She hefted the thing, which seemed to contain a fist-sized rock. Turning it upside down, she shook it.

  A black rock fell beside her knee. It was rounded and smooth, oddly shaped. It looked like a carving of a vaguely human heart that some craftsman had rendered from a piece of hard coal. It lay several inches from her, but she felt its warmth even through her leather breeches. The rock was surprisingly large for its weight. Its density was more like soft pine than stone.

  She tried to look away from the stone and found that she could not. Reluctantly, yet at the same time feeling a tingling excitement, she reached for it. Her fingers finally reached the smooth ebony surface …

  … and her world exploded into black.

  Newt meandered through the pines, thoroughly bored. He buzzed around looking for something, anything, to catch his interest. The air in the woods was thick and heavy, and lethargy contributed to his boredom.

  His path took him back to the grove, but he was in no particular hurry. Without an urgent reason, the faerie dragon could not possibly travel in a straight line, and so his arrival could be anywhere from hours to days away.

  He reached the shore of a broad pond, hovering silently with a steady fluttering of his gossamer wings. Slowly he settled onto a wide pine bough, looking around the shore. Such watering places, the dragon had discovered, were likely to yield his quarry.

  Indeed, he soon saw a tiny fawn, staring into the clear water on the other side of the pond. Instantly, Newt crouched, his tail arrowing straight behind him. When he was quite certain of achieving surprise, he acted.

  He cast a simple illusion spell upon the reflection of the young deer. The unfortunate creature found itself looking at a purple-furred, fang-toothed horror that appeared to lunge out of the water, gaping maw extended. With a sharp squeal of terror, the fawn tumbled backward in a rolling bundle of gangly legs.

  “Hee hee hee!” Newt squealed as the little creature finally stumbled to its feet and sprinted awkwardly into the woods. “I can’t stand it!” he shrieked. He nearly lost his grip as he slipped to hang below the branch, supporting himself with his two left legs. Tears clouded his vision as he scrambled back atop the bough.

  “Oh, but that was marvelous!” he boasted to the forest at large. “Nothing like a good joke to move a day along!”

  He decided that he must share this wonderful story with Robyn. She would cluck disapprovingly at his prank—she always did when a cute and helpless animal was involved—but Newt suspected that, deep down, she would be amused. And he simply had to tell somebody!

  Springing into the air, the faerie dragon beat his wings so hard that they hummed. He zipped like an arrow across the pond and darted into the forest on the far side. Weaving among the tree tops, he raced toward Genna’s grove.

  But when he reached the stream at the southern edge of the grove, he slowed. Something did not look right.

  Newt gasped when he saw the bodies on the ground and quickly buzzed down to light upon Robyn’s back. With relief, he felt her breathing beneath him, albeit slowly. The man, he saw with little surprise and no regret, was dead.

  “Oh, Robyn, wake up!” he pleaded, leaping to the ground and gently nudging her shoulder. “Please! It’s me, Newt! What should I do?”

  He shook his tiny head frantically, looking around for some answer to his question, when he spied the black rock at Robyn’s side. Something about the stone seemed unnatural, repulsive. His nimble brain quickly connected the rock to his friend’s unconsciousness.

  Grasping the offending stone in both his forepaws, he leaped into the air. With the most strenuous thrumming of his wings, he climbed, feeling like a lumbering condor. Slowly he flew across the stream, away from the grove of the Great Druid. After he had gone a mile or so, he dropped the stone in the woods and raced back to Robyn’s side.

  With relief, he saw that she had already begun to stir.

  “A sail! Tristan, a sail!”

  The prince jerked from his slumber. He raised his head from the air bladder and shook it to clear the cobwebs. Blinking the saltwater from his eyes, he followed Daryth’s pointing finger.

  “I see it! It’s coming right toward us!”

  “Things are starting to look up,” grinned the Calishite.

  “Call them,” croaked Pontswain, hope lighting his eyes.

  “Too far,” said Daryth. “But they’re coming right at us!”

  The little vessel indeed skipped closer. It had a single mast with a sail colored in a broad rainbow pattern. The prow was high, so they could not see the interior of the craft. As it neared them, however, they heard strains of a song sung in a clear, female voice.

  “I knew a merry widow, to her neighbors quite demure,

  But all the lads that saw her said,

  The lady’s far from pure.

  Now I can’t say the lads are right

  (but I can’t say they’re wrong)

  And I know that merry widow couldn’t—

  “And what’s this?” The song was abruptly interrupted as a beaming, weatherbeaten face peered suddenly over the bow at them. “Three drowned rats—and some flotsam!”

  Tristan’s greeting died in his mouth, so astonished was he by the question and answer. The speaker was a stout woman, perhaps forty years of age. Her round face was split by a smile as wide as the sea. A garish hat, festooned with grapes and apples and huge flowers, sat astride her head, sagging nearly to her shoulders.

  “Well, come aboard before I sail on by!” she cried, suddenly ducking out of sight.

  But then a rope snaked into the air, splashing into the water between them, and each of them grabbed it as the boat passed only a few feet away. Tristan saw that it was a craft about twenty-five feet long, low of beam, but with sleek lines and an eager, seaworthy look.

  They hauled on the rope as the boat’s lone occupant hoisted the sail and the slim craft drifted slowly to a stop. The woman had a lute strung across her back, and an assortment of canvas bags had been thrown into the hull.

  She reached down with a large red hand and pulled Tristan from the water. The prince no sooner flopped into the bottom of the boat than Canthus, Pontswain, and then Daryth, fell in beside him.

  “The name’s Tavish!” said their hostess, standing with her hands upon her hips as she scrutinized her passengers. She was shorter than Tristan, though she certainly weighed as much. Her face was pretty in a solid, farmwife sort of way. It was impossible not to be cheered while in the range of that beaming smile.

  Her face grew thoughtful as she took in the sword at Tristan’s side. Self-consciously, he looked at the plain leather hilt, the worn scabbard that had rotted away to reveal some of the glistening silver blade and its ancient runes. Tavish looked back to his face.

  “And, judging by your weapon,” she said, “I’m guessin’ that you’ll be the Prince of Corwell!”

  Hobarth moved at a steady plod through the meadows and forests of Myrloch Vale. He was impervious to the beauty around him, interested only in drawing closer to the grove of the Great Druid. There, his god had told him, he would find the young druid. And Bhaal was never wrong.

  It never occurred to the huge cleric that he would have any difficulty removing Robyn from the care of her teacher. Hobarth had used his powers against druids before, and their feeble nature magic had proven to be no match for the aroused might of Bhaal. Indeed, when allied with the Council of Seven, the power of Bhaal had been sufficient to drive the druids
from Alaron.

  True, these woods seemed more eternal than the forests that still remained upon Alaron. But he shrugged off the notion that druid magic was a force to be reckoned with.

  He began to sense the nearness of his destination, and with it a powerful, arcane calling. Something was in the woods to his side. It radiated a sense of cool evil that the cleric found very pleasant, even exhilarating. He stopped for a moment, looking curiously into the brush. Whatever it was, the source of the calling struck a highly responsive chord in the cleric’s breast. He was unable to ignore it.

  Hobarth thrashed his way into the clump of bushes, pushing brambles and briars aside. He could tell that he neared the source of the calling, but that only made his desire to reach it stronger.

  Suddenly he saw it, lying at the foot of a dead oak tree. A glistening black rock lay upon the ground. It attracted him strangely. Hobarth stepped forward and picked up the object. It felt very warm and smooth in his hand, as if it belonged there. Amused, the cleric hefted the object, tossing it from one hand to the other and back. Smiling, he turned back toward the grove and continued his march.

  Hobarth was not attuned to nature and took no notice of the fact that all of the plant life within fifteen feet of the stone was withered and dead.

  In another hour he arrived at the bank of a small stream. Somehow, he knew that this was the border to the Great Druid’s grove. As he stepped into the stream, intending to wade across it, a sudden blow smashed his body and knocked him back to the shore. Springing to his feet, the cleric peered around, seeking his assailant.

  But he saw nothing. More slowly, he reached forward and touched the invisible barrier he had struck. It seemed to run along the shore of the stream and was solid as iron. Cursing, he considered this evidence of druidic might. He watched a small bird dart across the stream and saw that it was unaffected by the barrier. But when Hobarth reached forward, the invisible wall stopped him cold.

  He chanted a short phrase, and magic suffused his body. He rose slowly from the ground and floated twenty feet up in the air, to discover that the curtain of protection extended up at least that high. He did not want to go higher, for that would have carried him above the treetops and he did not wish to be observed.