Now free from his quiet village life and free from the danger and adventure of the Foresters, Ethan felt as if he was now a man born into a world where he could do absolutely anything that he wanted, and it felt great. But then there was May. He was in love and he was sure that she was in love with him as well. Her wound seemed serious but for some reason Ethan trusted the care and advice of the Woodfolk, and he felt that she would be safe with them for the time being. He would retrieve her from their village when the Troll was no longer a threat and the people of the Three Baronies had been warned of the rebirth of Wizardcraft into their land and its creatures.
What then, Ethan wondered. He knew that he wished to marry May, but where would they go to settle down and raise a family, and how would Ethan support his new family? He began to fear that he would have to sell his storytelling to patrons of taverns and inns in Greenwell, exactly what he feared when he crossed the border into this barony. In Wendlith things could be different, but that southern barony was too strange and exotic for the Vharian. The Barony of Vhar was his home and would always be his home, and maybe he could convince May to travel there with him to dwell in Lumberwall or even Pineburg just across the border in Greenwell. Or maybe, he thought, they could visit those enchanting woodland towns that Scarlet had forced him to avoid during their travels.
He actually smiled as he wiped the tears of stress and weariness from his face. Ethan was a Wizard now, and he was going to be a very important person whether he liked it or not. All of the Three Baronies was open to him and he would take whatever it offered him and his beloved.
Chapter Twenty
A Dangerous Reception in Vhar
Moments later Ethan found himself on the border between the Barony of Greenwell and the Barony of Vhar. He recovered easily from the vertigo of his Wizardcraft transportation, but not so easily from the further exhaustion that it placed upon him. He was blessed with the scent of healthy green woodlands and familiar summer mountain air. He was standing in the center of the Three Baronies Road facing a wooded hillside that the road meandered up. Birds, some Dawn Heralds and Green Finches, chirped excitedly in the warm summer day. Eyes still closed, Ethan smiled and sighed as he felt the cooler high air that was prevalent in the Barony of Vhar. It was still very warm in the heart of summer, but it was much more familiar and tolerable to the storyteller than the warmer forestlands of southern Greenwell.
He opened his pale amber eyes, the last glint of blue light fading, and looked up. He stood directly under the ancient stone arch that was shrouded in moss and engraved with old runes that identified the boundary between the two Baronies. The sun broke lightly through the swaying green leaves of the aspen and oak trees that splayed their canopies over the road and dappled the ground and Ethan’s upturned face with contrasting designs of light and shade. He turned slowly in a circle scanning his surroundings and saw no guards about, but he did notice some peculiar gouges and scrapes marring the dirt of the road.
Ethan immediately regretted leaving his hand axe and armor in the vale near Greenwell City, but resolved to just hurry along the one mile stretch of road to Lumberwall. He didn’t have the time or the strength to keep whisking himself across the whole of the Three Baronies.
“Why is it that whenever I use my Wizardcraft I find myself in one mess after another?” he asked himself as he began jogging north up into the wooded foothills of the Vhar Mountains.
Through periodic breaks in the trees he could see the massive gleaming peaks of white snow and gray rock towering misty and majestic in the distance beyond the gently rolling evergreen uplands that flowed north to greet them. Already stands of pine and spruce could be spotted in the deciduous forests around him, namely near the aspen groves, and the Vharian knew that by the time he reached Lumberwall evergreens would almost entirely replace the oaks and maples in which he now found himself.
As long, tense moments dragged on with Ethan nervously jogging along the road the chirping of the birds began to slow until they were silent. Then, when the storyteller rounded a bend in the road that snaked around a wooded rocky hilltop, he came upon a shattered ruin of a merchant wagon in the middle of the road. It was pointing downhill towards him and its left side was completely crumpled and missing its wheels. Whatever mounts had once pulled the cart were now gone, broken or torn from their lashings. Even from Ethan’s vantage point of about sixty feet he could see the dried blood and gore strung all about the area around the wagon.
He inched forward cautiously and body parts and strips of clothing became evident about the ruined transport. It smelled strongly of blood and an odd scent that Ethan couldn’t quite place. He kept his distance when he reached the wagon, but he also kept his eyes on it for any sign of danger. He should have been watching the heavily-forested roadside.
With an ear-splintering roar and an earth-shuddering thump, a Blood Bear crashed onto the road just behind Ethan. Blood Bears that Ethan had known of growing up were scary enough, but the recently-transformed Blood Bears were outright nightmares given form. This specimen in particular was far larger than what Ethan had thought that Blood Bears were supposed to be, and its crimson shaggy fur was vibrant and stood out in the sylvan green about the road. Its small eyes glowed in a fierce blue color and its wide roaring maw was home to two additional tusks on either side of its jaw behind the pair that they possessed prior to the return of Wizardcraft.
On the large hump of its upper back were buried four jagged spikes, two on each side, of ruby-colored transparent stone jutting cruelly into the air. Flickering and racing between the spikes were lines and webs of white-blue lightning and electricity. Then Ethan noticed similar snaking lines of energy sparked and raced along its many teeth and tusks and occasionally a bolt shot from its mouth to join with its Wizardcraft eyes. Ethan was paralyzed with fear and unable to move as this massive brute lumbered towards him. So mesmerized was he by the horrific Wizardcraft beast advancing menacingly towards him that Ethan didn’t notice its heavy limp and the gallons of blood and entrails pouring from a wide gaping wound in its belly just in front of its rear legs.
Awe-struck, the storyteller stood there unmoving, and just as the Blood Bear was about to reach him a blood-soaked short sword, devoid of a cross guard, whirled through the air and ended its flight when it plunged deeply, up to the hilt, into the left side of the beast’s skull just behind its eye. The Blood Bear roared as its head swung to the right from the terrible blow, and after a still tense frozen moment it collapsed, its massive bulk shuddering the earth immediately around it and bringing Ethan to the seat of his pants on the dirt road.
As Ethan furrowed his brow in confusion at his sudden fortune a Greenwellian Knight strode from the trees and onto the road. His dark green tabard was dashed in blood, not his own, and, as he strode cautiously towards Ethan and the downed Blood Bear, he unsheathed a heavy two-handed blade from a thick leather scabbard on his back. His dark eyebrows were very low over his cold blue eyes as he barked, “Where in the Soul Wastes did you come from, boy?”
When Ethan was about to stammer a reply, all the while never taking his eyes from the advancing mustached knight, he realized that this was the very same knight that was stationed at the border between the two baronies when he passed into the Barony of Greenwell earlier that summer.
“Well?” the rough knight asked impatiently as he walked up to the dead Blood Bear and nudged it cautiously with his leather-booted foot.
“I … uh … am on an errand for the Foresters of the Three Baronies, Sir Knight. I need to get to the Keep of Lumberwall and get a message to Baron Ruauld immediately!” exclaimed the storyteller, quickly building his statement from unsure and confused to resolute and emboldened.
The Greenwellian Knight bent over and grasped the hilt of his short sword, placed a foot against the beast’s enormous skull next to where the blade was embedded, and with a grunt he pried his weapon loose, peppering the surrounding few feet with thick dark blood. “Is that a fact, lad? So you actually be
came a Forester, eh?”
Ethan was again taken aback and he asked, “You remember me? Don’t you get a lot of travelers at your post down the hill?”
“Yeah, I see plenty of folks coming through here, but it’s not too often that some yellow-eyed scrawny Vharian that lost his family comes walking out of the mountains,” answered the man with a slight grin.
“Have you ever seen anything like that before, boy?” inquired the knight, motioning towards the hulking corpse of the Blood Bear with his head.
The knight pulled the chain hood of his armor over his black and gray hair and donned his steel brimmed helm as Ethan finally answered, “Well, it’s a long story, but I’ve seen something similar before, yes.”
The knight raised a bushy eyebrow and eyed the storyteller curiously. After a moment he shrugged and plunged his short sword into the scabbard at his hip. “Well, that bastard had quite a shock in him. When I gutted it with my sword it gave me a shock big enough to send me flying like a frightened Snow Herald. It probably would have eaten me while I tried to get the feeling to return to my hands and feet, but then that monster caught wind of you back here on the road.”
He continued, “So how did you get here by yourself without a weapon? Shouldn’t you be wearing the hide armor and using one of those fancy silver hatchets, since you’re a Forster and all?”
“Well, it’s all part of that same long story, but I can tell you about it on the way to Lumberwall. The wilds of the Three Baronies are now more deadly than they have been in a thousand years,” explained Ethan as he began walking up the road, gesturing for the older knight to follow him.
Fifteen minutes later Ethan found himself once again in Lumberwall, the capital of the Barony of Vhar. He and the older Greenwellian Knight, Ross was his name, strode determinedly through the south gate of the town after having negotiated entry with a large group of brown tabard-garbed guardsmen who manned the now-sealed wooden gate in the stockade wall. Many travelers and merchants had been slain in the last couple days and a Wizardcraft-warped Blood Bear had apparently entered the town and raised all sorts of havoc.
The duo moved briskly down the dirt lane that cut the town into even east and west districts until they came to the Keep of Lumberwall which lay in the exact center of town. In fact, the main road of the town passed beneath an enclosed stone skywalk that connected the two halves of the timber keep, the royal hall and living quarters on the west side of the road and the armory and garrison on the east. The keep was, along with the local Cathedral of the Ancestors, among the largest structures in the town, but it was utterly dwarfed by the Castle of Greenwell.
Ethan smirked inwardly when he thought back to the spring. Just last season he was astounded by the urban immenseness of Lumberwall when he first staggered, parched and hungry, into the town. But since then he had been in the largest settlement in all of the Three Baronies and he had seen and been a part of so many colossal things. How quickly things can change, he thought to himself.
The Keep of Lumberwall wasn’t very heavily guarded as most of the town guardsmen were stationed at the gates at either end of town, but still when the two of them reached the open doorway to the Royal Hall they were confronted by a massive, hulking Vharian guardsman with a rose-blond braided beard that hung to the center of the golden yellow symbol of the crossed hatchet and hammer, the symbol of the Barony of Vhar, that was embroidered on the chest of his brown tabard.
“Halt, boys! What be your business with the Baron?” barked the guardsman.
Ethan was about to answer when Ross interrupted, “We are agents of the Barony of Greenwell, dispatched by Baron Fernhollow of Greenwell City himself, tasked with delivering an urgent message to Baron Ruauld.”
The hulking guardsman nodded tersely and he shouldered his heavy steel halberd before stepping aside with his iron-gauntleted hand extended towards the hall. Ross nodded his thanks and trudged into the keep and Ethan hurried to keep up with the grizzled old knight. The Royal Hall of the Keep of Lumberwall, though very rustic and miniscule when compared to the majesty of the Castle of Greenwell, had a charm and a grandeur about it that somehow flaunted an equal strength and less arrogance. Oddly the Vharian felt a brief welling of pride when he entered the keep.
The Royal Hall smelt of pine and cedar, its timber walls and pillars a reddish brown in the thick golden glow of the brass candle sconces that lined the walls. Between pillars the heraldry of Vhar hung heavily upon brown banners, and a still warm air lay within the large thickly-raftered chamber. At its end stood a throne of stone and pine but it was empty. Its owner, Baron Ruauld, stood off to the side with a small personal retinue of Lumberwall guardsmen talking sternly amongst one another about the dire straits that the Vharian people were in with mutated Blood Bears preying upon the populace. Somewhere Ethan had heard that Baron Ruauld was a brilliant tactician and now the storyteller-turned-Wizard was witnessing it.
So enamored were they in their defensive plans for the city of Lumberwall and the outlying villages, that they didn’t even hear or notice the slight Vharian’s approach. Ethan quickly cleared his throat and spoke out in a voice that he thought sounded alarmingly childish when compared to the gruff serious tones spoken by the other warriors in the hall, “Pardon me, my Baron.”
All heads abruptly turned and Ethan was taken aback by the tired intensity in their heavy low brows, especially the tall Baron of Lumberwall. The Baron, his face a mien of exhaustion and worry amidst his scruffy silver whiskers and framing satin-blond locks, turned to better face this newcomer. His shadowed brown eyes lowered to Ethan’s bare forearms, quickly pondering the strange cerulean curving lines and symbols tattooed there.
Ethan interrupted the Baron’s uncomfortable visual analysis by blurting out, “Baron Ruauld, sir, my name is Ethan Skalderholt. I have come from Greenwell City to explain what has befallen our land of the Three Baronies. I have come to explain why Vhar’s Blood Bears are transformed along with the Deep Wolves of Greenwell and I presume the Sun Cats of Wendlith and all the Three Baronies’ other great beasts.”
As Ethan spoke these words the Baron’s eyes kept lowering to the storyteller’s arms, and the creases upon his brow deepened. In answer to his unspoken query Ethan hesitantly explained, “Power, Wizardcraft of the Ancient Age, has returned to the Three Baronies, my lord. And I am its wielder.”
Ethan pulled his white woolen shirt over his head and dropped the garment at his feet, revealing his thin torso that was completely shrouded in brilliant mysterious swirling designs of blue. His thin wiry arms, and likely his legs by now, were too covered. “These symbols, these are a mark that proclaims me as a Wizard, the first of our current age. But Wizardcraft returned not only with me as its host but also the various dangerous beasts of the wilderness. It has changed them, giving them deadly powers and erasing any anxiety about contact with man. In fact, I believe their minds have been Wizardcraft-altered as well. It is almost as if they crave human contact now, so that they may slaughter and prey upon us and reclaim the wilderness for their own.”
Long moments stretched on when nobody spoke in reply and Ethan nervously bent down and picked up his shirt. He should be used to these moments by now, he thought as he donned his tight wool shirt. Finally Ruauld spoke in a low grim tone, “If you speak truth, man of Greenwell, then perhaps your death will once again rip this accursed Wizardcraft from our land?”
The storyteller swallowed as he pondered Ruauld’s words. What if that was the answer? What if the ending of Ethan’s own life would once again rid the Three Baronies of Wizardcraft and Wizards and return the beasts of the land to their less bewildering deadly forms they had possessed since the dawn of the current age? Could it really be that easy? he thought to himself.
Maybe, too, the Troll, being a creature of Wizardcraft as it was, would also be snuffed out of existence like an extinguished candle wick if Ethan was to ascend to the Ancestor Lands, or the Soul Wastes if he was truly cursed. It was certainly worth it, Ethan thought. I
n his present situation and state of being maybe it would be preferable to die. He was without direction, he was Wizardcraft-branded and disfigured thanks to this unasked-for power of transportation he had received, and everyone that he had befriended these last couple of weeks had died or had become seriously injured.
His very short stint as a Forester of the Three Baronies had filled him with energy and vigor for life but he never really had felt the part of a Forester. And this new existence as a Wizard, the only Wizard, was deeply disturbing and equally angering to him. Why was he chosen to become the one who would return Wizardcraft to the world, and who was the one who had chosen him? He never wanted this power nor had he asked for it. Perhaps Ethan should just fall upon the sword of the Baron of the Barony of Vhar. Then he remembered May and the experiences that they had recently shared, the love and the passion.
In reply to his baron’s ominous query the storyteller responded in a grim tone of his own, “I am no Greenwellian, sir. I am one of your subjects. Do not let the company of this noble Greenwellian Knight at my side belie you. I am a Vharian through and through, a storyteller in fact, born and raised by my grandmother and grandfather, Hildar and Ethyl Skalderholt, in the high village of North Ridge which lies upon the southern slopes of Whitethorn Mountain in the north of our barony.”
He continued, “I left at the end of spring this very year for Greenwell City after discovering that my deceased grandmother was indeed the famous Forester of the Three Baronies known as the Axe Maiden. I even managed to join that illustrious order. But in my heart I am still a storyteller of Vhar and I feel that I will always be one. But then this Wizardcraft came to me and all I have known since then is death and hardship.”
The Azure Wizard Page 19
