‘We are nearing Thock Wood and Grasswater,’ Chen said.
The thocks marched in an endless procession towards a widening band of yellow. Above the trio, the cloud thinned out into nothing. Chen plunged into a tree with a crash, sending the erfin sprawling over him into the safety of a branch. The prince reached out a hand and pulled the erfin to his feet.
‘The Spirit of Yu does not live here. The sky will no longer lift us into it.’ Chen’s brow was knitted with concern.
Mirrortac suddenly felt vulnerable. ‘What do we do? I fear the thocks will not allow us passage and we cannot go back to the forest!’
Chen paused and grunted. ‘I did not foresee this. Perhaps there is time to retreat far enough so Yu may lift us up again. There, I shall have time to think of a solution.’
Mirrortac agreed that there was no other option open to them. Thus they began the arduous series of short flights from tree to tree back into the Faug Forest and towards imminent danger. They listened for the telltale rattle or hiss of snerks but heard nothing.
After they had penetrated some distance into the forest, the prince decided to tackle another flight. A faint and feeble updraft lifted them from the treetops and into the sky. A distant roar bellowed up from the forest, and as they rose up, they could see a host of innumerable snerks, occupying a whole section of forest many hundreds of erfin-lengths square. They all gasped at the sight of their masses that created a green-blue smudge across the great expanse of forest canopy. The snerks squirmed and wriggled across the treetops at speed while Chen glided higher, straining to reach the cloud level.
The forest stretched out beneath them, revealing what filled the hole in the forest - a lake overgrown with reeds and alive with the movement of hungry gorkles. The waters of the Bludstream emptied into the lake but the stream was totally obscured, marked only by the winding emerald green line of darker trees. Northering, the yellow band of the Wastes of Nug glimmered in the heat of Luma.
Mirrortac suddenly loosened his grip. ‘I must go. Forget me, Chen,’ he cried, leaping off the prince’s back.
He fell in a gangling jumble of arms and legs towards the waiting forest and the approaching army of snerks. The prince dipped down and rushed at the erfin, plucking him out of the sky.
‘I will not allow you to die to these dark ones. There must be another way out of this problem,’ Chen cried, his voice trembling.
‘Let me go! I have brought this terror to you. It is me they want. You cannot save me,’ Mirrortac shouted, struggling to free himself.
But the faug held the erfin tight to his chest and climbed into the sky again. Below, the snerks were bending up their many noses towards the dangling erfin, their roars rising in unison and filling the air with their wrath. The faugs glided higher, climbing in long lazy circles until they had risen through the cloud and well above it.
Chen levelled out and called out to the air. ‘Hail Yu, mistress of forest and sky! Bind your breath upon us. Bind us beyond the darkness of thock. Bind us and carry us in our mission. I declare this a sacred decree. Be done!’
In a few moments the breeze surrounded them and a swirling white cloud formed above them, filling the erfin with wonderment.
‘How can this be? Now the sky even listens to Yu!’ Mirrortac exclaimed.
Chen and the faugs made swift progress now as they glided once more towards the Wastes of Nug, accompanied by the white swirling cloud. They dived into the sky in a long casual arc, out beyond the cloud and the storm and over the unwelcoming arms of Thock Wood. The yellow band of the Wastes of Nug opened out into an endless plain - a desert dotted with the feeble forms of old and twisted thocks that had been swallowed up in the yellow sands. The snerks pursued them all the while, eager to get at the erfin who had slain their She. Thock Wood braced up at them as they sunk down from the sky and over towards the desert. They glided in over the last trees and came to earth on the sands of Nug. Mirrortac stepped down off Chen and took note of the wood. The thocks stood in a long line of pale trunks and the erfin noticed their limbs visibly move towards him.
‘Step back, Princeling Mirrortac! The thocks will reach out and bind you to them. We are few and they are many. We could not save you,’ Chen warned.
They all stepped back a safe distance and listened for the approach of the snerks. They had not long to wait as the rumble and roar of the snerkian masses could be heard in the distance. The thocks creaked and moved apart, allowing the snerks a clear passage. Chen and the he-faugs were aghast.
‘We are not safe. The thocks are yielding to the snerks. Mirrortac, be upon me. We must be away!’ the prince urged.
But Mirrortac ran away from them and into the desert. ‘You must all go. Leave me be. The snerks will nought harm me. I remember the words,’ Mirrortac shouted out to them.
This seemed to satisfy the prince as he and the he-faugs opened their wings and were taken into the sky again where they hovered near at hand. Mirrortac had lied to Chen but he knew it was the only way to convince him to leave. The ground rumbled with the approach of the snerks, filling the erfin with fear and trembling. He edged farther into the desert, his feet sinking a little into the fine sand beneath. The white swirling cloud was rising into the sky, urging the faugs to go with it or be left stranded on the ground to face the snerks.
Chen shouted down to the erfin. ‘We must stay with the cloud but we will be back to take you with us when you have fled the snerks. Hail Yu!’
‘Hail Yu!’ Mirrortac answered as he watched the faugs recede along with the white cloud.
The wood parted further until there was a great space for the snerks to pass through. Their rattling breath and rumbling progress encompassed the whole of Thock Wood. Soon he saw the first of them, pressing their heads through the trees and roaring with delight as they spied him. He retreated farther until he was standing atop a dune of glistening hot sand. The heat of Luma was intense and burned at his exposed skin. The snerks crawled on their bellies to the wood’s border and slithered in small groups across the sand. They were all as large as at least 20 faugs put end to end and the cold gleam of their many eyes filled him with a dread beyond measure.
The sand slipped a little beneath him. Mirrortac stumbled into the rolling golden dunes, struggling to run in the deepness of the hot sands. The snerks rattled with sadistic glee, knowing they had him trapped. The erfin fell and crawled up the next dune. En masse, the snerks glided across the sand behind until the entire multitude eyed him from the opposite dune. Then one of them began to make its way towards him. He stood up and threw himself over the side, allowing his body to roll into the valley between dunes then got up and scampered up the loose sand of the next dune while the snerks followed.
Mirrortac stumbled up and down dune after dune until he was some distance into the desert. The snerks sped up and, to his horror, soon had him surrounded. Mirrortac withdrew his sword, preparing to battle it out. Luma shone down on him mercilessly from a sky untouched by cloud. The dunes of the desert ambled away towards the northern horizon. Mirrortac desperately tried to remember the secret words but to no avail.
Suddenly there was a movement within the dunes and the whole of the desert erupted into life, like the waters of a lake, rippling with motion from an unseen, unknown force. Mirrortac stared about him in alarm and awe. ‘What possesses this earth?’ he cried. ‘Oh Mateote, why must I be tested in this dead land!’
Fear changed to amazement as he watched the desert sands open up around the snerks, swallowing them in a writhing, struggling furore. The snerks clambered upwards in a desperate bid to escape the sucking hole beneath them, their dark eyes convicting him, jaws roaring with rage and terror. With only its head kept above the sand, the last of the snerks gurgled its final defiance - uttering what sounded like the name of some Netherworld demon – ‘Beeble-Zub!’ it said – before it too was covered over and the desert returned to calm.
Mirrortac searched the sky for sight of the faugs but of them and the white swirling
cloud there was no sign. When he looked back towards Thock Wood he found his way barred by a row of menacing desert thocks; animate forms of deadwood that could move of their own will through the dunes. Their gnarled and twisted trunks were bleached by the constant heat and their dry limbs quivered at any step the erfin made. Mirrortac realised that his faug friends may not be able to return, abandoning him unwittingly to the vague mercies of the Wastes of Nug.
Mirrortac sat down and considered all that had happened. He felt pleased for the faugs and his children who would grow up now without ever again knowing the fear that the snerks had brought to the forest. Would he ever see them again? Where would this mission against the darkness now take him? As he licked at his burnt feet, he felt sure that neither the Faug Forest nor Eol would ever see him alive again. Rising to his feet, he rubbed the sweat off his brow and regarded the waves of shimmering heat around him as they separated into mirages of movement, creating images of lakes in small hollows while vague shapes bobbed and weaved above the dunes. Everywhere above the sands hovered the spectres of the heat.
At the spot where the last snerk had uttered the name of the demon master, Mirrortac saw a grey shape forming, its likeness to an erfin causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. It seemed to be standing with its back to him and staring down into the sand as though in contemplation. Mirrortac shook his head with disbelief and squeezed his eyes in an effort to clear his vision of the spectre. When he opened them again, he found the spectre with its head turned towards him, its features grim and bearing the breastplate of a warrior with the head of a nite-wolf inscribed upon it.
Startled, Mirrortac stammered: ‘Wha – What are you?’
The lips of the warrior moved but it was in his head that Mirrortac heard the voice.
‘At last!’ shouted the warrior, his voice sharp-edged, uncompromising. ‘We have taken the snerks. Now, we must seek out the demon monster Beeble-Zub and bring it to heel. Death to all the foulness of the Netherworld!’
Mirrortac realised at once who it was. ‘Then you be Merftac?’ he said.
The warrior bowed. ‘The same!’
‘Did YOU cause the sands to swallow up all the snerks?’
The spectre of Merftac shook his head in denial. ‘Nay. The sands be under the service of a master who supports us. His enemy be Beeble-Zub, a creature of the foulest darkness which lives far across the Wastes of Nug in a pit beneath the earth.’
Mirrortac waved his hands, indicating his furless body. ‘And how should I live in this place? If the sands have swallowed the snerks then in certainty it will deal with any monster! Or can this demon fly?’
The transparent form of the spectre wavered.
‘There be others who will need our aid to vanquish the demon. Its power be in the darkness and when the fire of Luma is snatched from the sky its power will be at its greatest. The master of the sands be in need of our aid. He will help us go there but we must nought fail. The moment of darkness is near!’
Mirrortac sensed Merftac’s urgency as though it was his own. Suddenly he imagined an entire company of erfin warriors at his side, their eyes aflame with the battle light, and waiting on him to give the command. His own blood raced with the battle urge and he could hear the echoes of the war cry raised in voice in some long forgotten past.
Mirrortac lifted his eyes up to the spectre. ‘Then are you with me in this?’
The spectre slapped the hilt of the sword at his waist. ‘I am always with you!’
Mirrortac unsheathed Moongleam and stabbed it out at the northern horizon. ‘Then let us be at the demon! Let death be its resting bed!’ he cried. But as he turned to Merftac again, the spectre had vanished.
Chapter 6 – The Sparkling Plain of Petrosium
The sands of the desert dunes were warm, even in the darkness of night. Mirrortac slept, his dreams expressing the fear that he may also be swallowed up in the wallowing hungry sands; but whatever force moved them it had other plans for him.
He awoke and brushed away the grains from his body, dislodging the yellow and white grains from his pink skin. The fur had started to regrow but to his surprise, the colour of it was crimson like fire. He sat up and looked around him. The thocks of Nug still guarded the edge of the Wastes, while behind him the dunes of the desert rolled on in static waves. Nothing stirred except a feeble wind that puffed up tiny handfuls of sand before dropping them again a little farther away. Luma burst up from an horizon uncluttered by trees or mountains, lighting up the sands of the desert in a bath of brilliant gold. The sunlight was already hot and searing in its intensity and he could feel his exposed skin burn. He stared at the thocks then back towards the dry, hot desert. Already he doubted the reality of the spectre and the impossible mission set for him. How could he possibly survive against the heat and dryness of the desert, he thought.
‘I would rather die to the thocks than to this that no sword nor axe can kill!’ he muttered.
With a swish of metal, Mirrortac withdrew Moongleam and strutted towards the menacing stark forms. The thocks shuddered to life and closed in their ranks. But the erfin did not hesitate as he approached, his sword firmly clasped in his hands. Death seemed an inevitability whatever the outcome. He closed in on the thocks and their dry limbs quivered with anticipation. Mirrortac felt the coursing of the battle spirit surge up into his muscles; he swished the sword out at the thocks, stabbing at any limb that moved. All the thocks suddenly vanished into the sand while the erfin charged one way then the other, scanning the sands for the enemy thocks.
‘Where are you thocks? Do you fear my blade!’ he shouted.
The sands were dormant. Mirrortac was uncertain whether to stay put or move ahead. Suddenly there was a gush of sand all around him as a thock rose up from under his feet, catching him unawares. He tried to leap clear but only managed to jump into one of its branches. He slashed at the wooden limbs but the blade bounced off as though hitting stone. The thock wrapped its branches around him and held him tight, preventing any movement. It made a creaking sound from within its trunk, as it started moving away into the dunes of the desert, still holding the erfin in its firm grasp.
‘Eat me here cursed thing of wood! Where do you take me?’ he cried.
The thock creaked on, sliding up and down each dune, carrying its captive far into the desert. Mirrortac watched as the forest diminished into the distance, becoming nothing more than a thin streak of green on the horizon. The thock creaked and made various sounds, speaking in its own wooden tongue while above them sat Luma, dominating a pale and breathless sky. The heat permeated everything: it moved with the air and filled the pockets between the dunes with a shimmering fountain of invisible fire. The erfin perspired as though his body was a sieve through which a lake seeped. All of him was wet and the glare of the sun blurred his sight.
Finally the thock halted and released him to the sands. The searing grains stung his feet at the touch while his head swirled in a daze. Through muddied vision, Mirrortac saw the grey-white form of the thock retreat across the dunes, leaving him to die in the midst of this wasteland. His tongue stuck in a blob to the roof of his mouth and his throat was dry with the fire that bore down into him. The erfin’s thirst was too much to bear. He did not want to die in such agony. He tried to lift the blade of Moongleam but his strength was waning fast. The lethal blade weighed down heavily on his arm as he lifted it slowly so it stood on its hilt. A spark of bright sunlight flashed off the blades and into his eyes, making him squint.
There was something that the High Priests of Mateote had said about self-induced death - ‘It would send you to the Netherworld,’ they had said. Perhaps he was already there, he thought. What did it matter? He let the sword fall across him then desperately tried to force the point of it into his chest.
‘I would nought do that, erfin!’
Mirrortac shuddered at the sound of Merftac’s voice in his head.
‘I wish to die quickly. Nought with the terrible heat of this Neth
erworld place,’ Mirrortac rasped.
‘You will not die. Your helper is at hand.’
‘Who? You are the only one here, Merftac … and you are spirit.’
‘I nought be spirit!’ a clear voice spoke out.
Mirrortac was stunned by the voice and tried to see who or what it was that spoke. The shadow of an erfin fell across his face. He squinted up at the emblazoned silhouette.
‘Who be that? Am I dead?’
‘With such foolishness you ought to be!’ came the stern yet familiar voice.
Mirrortac coughed. ‘Fillytac?’ he said, befuddled.
‘Yea, I grow weary of listening to the jabbering of flying demons. They have no use for a stubborn old erfin,’ he muttered.
‘But how …?’
‘Save your breath, friend,’ Fillytac interrupted. ‘When I heard those demons had taken you here close to the fire at the end of the earth, I forced them to take me also … and it be just as well. You would soon be dead otherwise.’
Fillytac leaned over his friend and produced a large pouch that had been hanging from a band tied around his waist.
‘Here, drink this,’ he said, unstoppering the pouch and pressing its mouth to Mirrortac’s lips.
A warm but soothing draught of liquid poured down into the parched throat of the erfin. He grabbed the pouch with both hands and drank fully.
‘You are my helper. I had nought expected you to be here. You must return. This is no task for an elder, my friend.’
‘And how do you suggest I return? The demon trees will leave me no passage. I have no better use than to be here. I did warn you about that sword! It is full of mischief!’ Fillytac reminded him.
The Wizard's Sword (Nine Worlds of Mirrortac Book 1) Page 14
