Despite the obstacles they were able to make good time. With the pace they were setting, they expected to reach the dark forest’s center within half a day barring major attack and there had been no sight of threat. Not so much as a moonrat moan.
Justan spent most of this time thinking on his bonded and what they would do once the battle was finished. Fist was an apprentice now and Justan’s contract with the Mage School would be up in a few weeks. Would the ogre stay behind and study? What of Deathclaw? What would his role be? For that matter what would Justan himself do?
Jhonate was under contract with the academy for another year. She had already told him she wanted to finish that contract out before going to see her father. Should he go and help rebuild the academy and train along side her or stay at the Mage School?
Eventually his thoughts wandered to the Scralag. Artemus’ book would only show him the one entry. Why did the spirit in the book think that Artemus’ awakening was so important? What he really needed to know was how he could call on the Scralag if he needed it. What if it could help during the fight with Mellinda? A thought occurred to him. There was someone he could ask.
Fist, keep an eye on me. Make sure I don’t fall off, he asked
Okay, the ogre replied, and Justan felt his large arms wrap around him.
Justan delved into the bond and reached for the frozen blockage that led to the Scralag. He could see it clearly, the solid web of blue and gold strands. He pressed his thoughts up against it and this time, instead of picking the woven magic apart, he sent his own magic into the blockage. He began altering the magic, making new connections until he had formed a tiny hole. He sent a tendril of thought inside.
Artemus. He waited for a few moments. Artemus, I need you.
There was a stirring beyond the blockage. A rush of coldness blasted through the tiny hole, chilling the bond, and Justan saw a flash of razor teeth. A beady black eye appeared on the other side of the hole.
“Whaaaat isss thiiiis?” said the Scralag. Its voice was like the coldest of winter winds blowing through cracks in the wall; high and airy.
Artemus, it is me, Justan.
“Iiiii knoooww yyouuu.”
Justan shivered. He reminded himself that he had nothing to fear. This was his great grandfather and the Scralag had never tried to hurt him. Artemus, I have a question. I’ve been trying to read your book, but the only passage that will come up is about your awakening. I need to know why that’s so important.
“Aaawaaaaake?” It sounded confused.
Yes, it’s a passage from when you were young and the school burned down. You protected everyone inside. That was the day you first discovered your magic. Do you remember?
“Thhhhe chiillldreeen. I saaaaaved theeeem.”
Yes. But what I need to know is what to do if I need you. What if I need your help to fight?
“Fiiiight? IIIII saaaaaaved theeeeem . . . IIIII saaaaaave . . . IIIIII saaaa . . .”
Justan! We’re here, Deathclaw said.
Wake up! Gwyrtha added.
Justan withdrew from the bond, a bit frustrated. He hadn’t accomplished what he had wanted, but at least Artemus had spoken to him. When he opened his eyes, he saw that it was dark and everyone was dismounting from their horses. The air smelled bad. How long had he been out?
“Justan, are you alright?” Jhonate asked, tugging on his leg. He slid down from Gwyrtha’s back and put his arm around her. He liked her new leather breastplate. It wasn’t as bulky.
“I’m fine,” he told her.
“You are shivering,” she said and in the dim light he could see her brow was furrowed in concern.
He kissed her forehead. “I was speaking with the Scralag. It’s cold in there. Where are we?”
“We are in the center of the dark woods,” she replied. “Can you smell the rot?”
“Smells like the south side of a dag-blamed beached whale,” Lenny said, his nose wrinkling.
“I smell it,” Justan said. It smelled like mold and rotten fish. But there were no fish in this place. The creeks that flowed through the forest were too small and the water that flowed out of the dark side of the forest was undrinkable. Justan looked up at the canopy overhead and saw pinpricks of light. It was still daytime.
This land is dying, Deathclaw sent. It smells of death.
Stinks! Gwyrtha agreed.
“I’ve only been in this place once before and that was with Gwyrtha when I first traveled to the Mage School,” Justan said. “There were moonrats everywhere then.”
“We have not seen a single one,” she said. “Not a moonrat or a troll or anything.”
“Sir Edge,” called Master Latva and Justan ran over. The wizard was standing with the leaders about half way down the line of horses and barrels of ground pepper were being unloaded. There were over twenty of them in various sizes. The ones pulled up from the Mage School’s storage had been as large as wine barrels. He hoped they had enough.
The old man smiled at Justan and a bit of that familiar blue twinkle in his eyes was back. “We’re ready to try your plan.”
“Good. What do you think, Professor Beehn?” Justan asked.
“I don’t know,” said the air wizard from astride his horse. It had been fitted with a special saddle that tied him in place so that he could ride despite his paralysis. “The trees are pretty thick here, but I understand they thin out the further in we go.”
“The air is foul and full of mist at its center,” Latva said. “That might help to keep it in the air.”
Beehn nodded. “Well there’s still a lot of forest to cover, but I suppose there’s nothing to do but give it a try.” He motioned to the four other air wizards they had brought with them. “Alright, I’ll get a current going. You start feeding it up to me when I give the signal. Then your job’s just to help me keep the air flowing, understand?” The wizards nodded. “Okay, then, everyone else will want to keep their faces covered as a precaution in case some of this blows back on us.”
The word went down the line and everyone placed handkerchiefs or cloths over their mouth and nose. Beehn concentrated and there was a stirring in the trees. A breeze blew past them, pushing towards the depth of the forest. The air was sweet compared to the foulness. Then the wind increased until leaves and twigs were flying past them, lifting up into the air.
Wizard Beehn gave the command and the barrels of pepper were opened. The wizards fed clouds of the black powder up and into the wind. The spice was carried through the tops of the trees and rained down like a fine mist. They began to hear screeches and moans from the darkness. Lesser trolls would be killed and modified trolls would be weakened and unable to regenerate. For anyone else, be it moonrat or goblinoid, the effect would be uncomfortable to say the least.
The last of the barrels was finally emptied. The professor continued on for a few more minutes, then stopped and let his arms down, slumping forward in exhaustion. “That’s all we have. Frankly I’m surprised it worked so well. I don’t know if we covered the entirety of the Dark Woods, but we got most of it.”
“Thank you, Professor Beehn,” said Master Latva with a smile. “You have performed admirably.”
“I only wish I could come with you, sir,” Beehn said.
“You have done more than enough here,” said the head wizard. “Now I need you to take charge when you get back. We’ll need Valtrek and Locksher to take Ewzad Vriil’s body and accompany Captain Demetrius back to Dremald. Then I want you to do a review of the wizards. We need to start the selection process for new High Council members right away.”
“What about Nikoli?” Beehn asked, eyeing the wizard who had once been Master DeVargas.
“I won’t be on the council again,” Nikoli said, his face tinged with embarrassment. “I’m content just being a wizard.”
“Well,” said Latva. “We can sort all that out later, can’t we?”
The cavalry took the horses and returned the way they came. The members of the strike force we
re left alone on the road, the stench of the Dark Forest only somewhat muted by the smell of pepper. It was expected that they would return by foot or not at all, meeting the rest of their men in the elf homeland when it was all over. If they did not return within a week’s time, it had been agreed that the remaining forces would come through and burn the dark forest to the ground.
Latva gathered them around and had everyone light their glow orbs. The devices were designed to imprint on the person who activated them and hover one foot over their heads and slightly forward, lighting the area around them. It had been agreed that, in this place, night vision wouldn’t be of much help because the creatures here had much better night vision than a human ever would. It was more important to be able to see where they were going.
The second thing Latva did was to have all of them clamp metal straps around their upper legs. He had brought a pair for each of them. The straps were runed to surround the legs of the wearer with a shield of water magic. He explained that the most perilous part of the Dark Forest was the danger of stepping on the venomous snakes and insects that inhabited the place. The shields the straps provided were strong enough to protect them against bites from any of the creatures they were likely to face.
Lenny cursed as he tried to put his on. The runes on his plate metal greaves were interfering with the magic in the straps and he couldn’t get them to stay on. Finally he just gave up. The armor would just have to be enough.
“It’s almost as if you’ve been planning this attack for years, Master Latva.” said Faldon, one eyebrow raised as he snapped his second leg band into place.
“Isn’t it?” Latva replied with a smile. He pointed into the forest. “She’s not far from here.”
They started off the road southward, into the bowels of the place. Master Latva insisted on taking the lead since he had been there before, but allowed Deathclaw and Alfred to scout ahead. The two of them hadn’t bothered with the glow orbs. Deathclaw’s natural eyesight was as sensitive as the beasts of this place, while Alfred wore some kind of dark-lensed spectacles that allowed him to see.
The two scouts sped ahead through the darkness completely at ease. The gnome was every bit as agile as Deathclaw and Justan couldn’t believe he had thought Alfred a scholar all these years. Justan walk next to Master Latva. The wizard kept a steady pace, quite quick for an old man, and sent a steady stream of earth magic ahead, opening up a path before them. Leaves and sludge and detritus fell away, replaced by smooth hard packed earth.
“Your father was right,” Latva said to Justan as they walked. “I’ve known this journey was going to come for a long time. It’s been one of my greater purposes you might say.”
“What do you mean, sir?” Justan asked. The light of his glow orb reflected off tiny eyes and slithering bodies in the darkness around him and he was grateful for the wizard’s precautions.
“It’s something I learned fifty years ago when I was called as head wizard,” he said. “Have you heard of the ceremony?”
“Yes, sir.” The High Council gathered around the Bowl of Souls and beseeched it to tell them the identity of their new leader. Then they projected their magic upon it until it chose one of them. Usually it was a wizard that had already been named. Sometimes in the past, it had named one of them on the spot.
“I had a vision granted me by the bowl that day. I saw a woman all in black standing before an enormous rotted tree. Orange-eyed moonrats clustered around her and she was holding a pair of blue eyes in her hands. A battle raged around us.”
“Blue eyes?” Justan said. A moonrat moan echoed from the forest ahead of them, echoed by many more throughout the forest. Justan saw tiny dots of light blink into existence all around. He saw the corpses of trolls killed by the pepper, their slime intermingling with the black rot on the forest ground.
“Yes, I’ve known this day was coming a long time. I researched the forest. Found out everything I could about its past. Finally I found who she was in the records. It was in an ancient book called, ‘The Sealing of Mellinda, the Troll Queen’.” Latva didn’t stop or acknowledge the trolls or the lights in the forest ahead. “Finally one day Alfred and I came here to see the place for ourselves. It wasn’t quite this vile then. The dark part was much smaller.”
“What did you see?” Justan asked. The troll bodies were much more numerous now. Many of them had fallen on top of each other.
“I saw the tree and the nastiness and I saw Mellinda herself, or at least the form she chose to show me.” He glanced at Justan then. “Listen Edge. She tries to be graceful. She tries to be alluring and seductive. But what you see isn’t really her. Remember that. What she really is withered away long ago.”
Justan nodded, and tried to ready himself mentally for the encounter. “What happened?”
Moonrat eyes glowed in the darkness all around the trail now. Most of them were green, but a few orange ones began to pop up amongst them. Justan found it strange that they weren’t trying to eat the troll carcasses.
The old wizard snorted. “She teased me. She tried to tempt me. In the end I was forced to be rude. I told her that one day I would return and when I did, I would bring her destruction. I told her I knew about her moonrats and their eyes. She attacked us then. We were able to fight her off, but I assume she is much more powerful now than she used to be.”
“So you knew about her all this time?” Justan said. The pairs of moonrat eyes were much thicker now. They hung in the trees all around. Troll corpses were piled up in the dozens all around them now and Master Latva’s magic lifted and rolled them aside to make room for their path they forged ahead. Deathclaw and Alfred returned to their sides.
Scouting ahead is useless now, Deathclaw said. The moonrats leave us a path all the way to a large tree. They are so thick there we will have to fight.
Alfred must have been communicating the same thing because Master Latva nodded. “I need to wrap this story up, so no more interruptions, please. I knew this day would come sooner or later, but I knew certain conditions had to be met before it happened. Mellinda needed to be a threat to the lands and she needed to have moonrats with orange eyes.
“I tried to slow down her progress as much as I could. I raised the wards around the road. I brought in the elves and gave them the land east of this place so they could combat her rot. When I first heard reports of green-eyed moonrats I knew the time was near. I hadn’t heard of the orange eyes until the day you returned through the Mage School portal. Now all we’re waiting for is the blue eyes, and to tell you the truth, I think it’s happened. I think it’s why she’s letting us in. So, be ready. I’ll do what I can, then it’s all up to you.”
“What do you mean, master?” Justan said. It sounded like Latva didn’t expect to be there for the whole battle.
Why did he say it like that, Justan? Fist asked.
You heard? Justan replied.
Everyone heard. Master Latva was letting all of us hear with his air magic, Fist said.
The corridor of moonrat eyes opened up and the old rotted Jharro tree came into view. It stood at the center of a small clearing, its great roots stretching into the forest around it. Black sludge and rotten leaves covered the ground and hundreds of moonrats circled the clearing. At least a third of them had orange eyes.
There, lounging in the roots, surrounded by moonrats was a female figure all in black. She pushed up to her knees and looked at them. Then slowly she stood, rubbing something between her fingers.
“What is this stuff you found that kills trolls and hurts my babies’ eyes?” she asked, walking towards them with a sultry swing to her hips. Mellinda seemed to grow as she approached, going from the size of a woman to the same height as Charz in just a few steps. She blew a small cloud of pepper off the tip of her finger. “It seems familiar to me somehow, but it’s been so long since I’ve been away from this place that I can’t quite figure it out.”
“Does it matter?” Latva said. “We’re here. This is the end. I’ve come
to destroy you just like we talked about long ago.”
“Long ago?” She laughed. “What are a few decades? I suppose if you won’t tell me, I’ll just have to have some slaves come in and test it for me after you’re dead.”
“It is you that will die, witch!” Jhonate shouted, twirling her staff.
“Stay on the trail!” Latva shouted.
“Ah, Jhonate Bin Leeths,” Mellinda chuckled. “You’re a Roo. You should know that being a witch isn’t a bad thing.”
“I am Roo-Tan!” Jhonate snapped.
“This ends now!” said Stout Harley.
“Ah Harley. I was so disappointed when you betrayed me.” She clasped her hands together and smiled, showing them a row of even white teeth. “Oh all my enemies are here. It’s so sweet. The thing is, you’re too late.” She laughed and grew in height until she rose above them all. She leaned forward, hanging over them. Her arms raised.
“Oh, I think you’re wrong,” Master Latva said, and he plunged his staff into the ground. The black sludge parted, flowing away from the tree, pushing Mellinda’s form with it, until the clearing was dry and clean.
“Now we have room to fight!” Lenny shouted.
Everyone began moving into the clearing. They formed a circle, the warriors staying to the outside while the archers and wizards kept to the middle.
“Stay out of the sludge and don’t let her touch you if you can avoid it,” said Latva.
Mellinda laughed. “Oh, I suppose that should have made me angry, but can’t you see? That’s why I haven’t tried to stop you. Nothing you do here will matter.”
“I dreamed this part, you know,” Latva said, smiling. “Your end begins moments from now.”
Mellinda reached one enormous black hand towards the wizard. Alfred darted forward, slicing through her hand with his gnomish blade. Her hand fell to the ground and deflated, releasing a swarm of insects, but another hand formed from her stump and grasped the wizard.
The Bowl of Souls: Book 05 - Mother of the Moonrat Page 46
