Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  “We fled here after the attack, and we’ve been stuck here ever since. The creatures don’t come near us, but they’re all around. It’s too dangerous to leave. This is your cottage isn’t it?”

  Marjan believed him, especially when he saw the way the once burly man had thinned down, a sure sign he’d had to give up meat for a time, and the extra vegetable gardens that had been planted all around were far more than he alone would ever have needed living on his own. They were hungry, and that could only mean that they’d been stuck here for a long time, trapped.

  Satisfied if still confused he let his new friend down and then dismounted and went to greet his friend, pleased to see him, to know some had survived, and then when he went to shake his hand, unexpectedly he found himself hugging him, tears forming in his eyes. He wasn’t the only one as he fancied the gruff blacksmith was also leaking a few drops of moisture, even before they started into the ritual back slapping and laughing like idiots lost in the moment. It was so good to know someone had survived.

  “I saw the damage they did to the town, and I didn’t know if anyone had got away.” It was the simple truth, and nowhere near to what he really wanted to tell him, but that would have involved crying like a child, and he didn’t want to do that. He suspected he wouldn’t be alone.

  “Some did, I don’t know how many, but when the creatures attacked from the south end of the village we fled north. Many did. But we got separated in the forests and I don’t know how many were caught.” Marjan did though, he’d seen the bodies, but he didn’t want to tell the man. He’d probably guessed the terrible truth already, why have it confirmed and rip the last shreds of hope from him.

  “We headed towards Gunder first, by the river trail, thinking to find shelter there, but that was destroyed and there were beasts all around, and so we had to come back through the forests. And then when we found this place, we were trapped, we couldn’t go any further. So we stayed, expecting to be attacked, but we never were. The beasts won’t come near us.”

  “No. The wards I put in place would stop them as they stop all predators and people of ill will, including as it turns out, the wyrmlings. I just didn’t know how long they would be effective or if the enemy would find a way through them.” He said it casually, forgetting that the blacksmith knew him only as a woodsman, not a wizard, and so he shouldn’t have been surprised when he saw the puzzled expression cross his face, but it wasn’t him who acknowledged that simple truth.

  “A long time I would think. They’re very strong and perfectly woven into the land, and the dark ones don’t know we’re here, so have never thought to send their armies against us.” Marjan looked up, startled, to see more people on the cottage’s deck, having apparently just come out to see who was visiting them. There was Silene of course, as he should have expected, standing there looking uncertain as to whether to be happy or confused. She was Sumas’ wife and he would never have left her, or the two babies who had apparently become toddlers in the time since he’d last seen them. All of them were looking happy and healthy which was good, but it wasn’t her that had spoken either. It was one of the women beside her, and they weren’t family. They weren’t from Snowy Falls either. They weren’t even human.

  Human sized if somewhat lithe of form, dressed in their distinctive green and brown bark armour which was both surprisingly strong and supple, and indecently tight fitting as it revealed every bump and curve of their bodies, carrying longbows also wrapped up in leaves and tree leather, and with their brilliant green eyes, pointed ears with little chunks missing from them, and eyebrows that angled unexpectedly upwards towards their hairline, they could only be one people.

  “Tree mothers.” Even as he laid eyes on them, recognised them for the dryads they were, and nodded politely to them, large parts of the puzzle started falling into place for him. Suddenly he knew how they had found his home, why the now extensive vegetable gardens were growing so abundantly, how they knew of his wards, and why the wards had let them through, their magic and their nature both would have allowed them that. The wards had been designed to keep out the evil, the predators and the bloodthirsty and they were none of those. Of course other questions started making themselves known, the first of them being where they had come from. There were no dryad groves in the Allyssian Forest, nor as far as he knew, in Gunderland itself.

  “Wizard.” The eldest of them bowed to him in turn, catching him a little by surprise. That they should know what he was, that was expected, it was the respect that they gave him that caught him off guard. He simply wasn’t used to it. But then he didn’t know many dryads, only Alyssi and she was only half dryad or even less, like her family. The difference was quite profound he realised, as her relatives had far darker skin than her, tougher too as it seemed to blend perfectly with the bark of the trees in which they lived, green eyes so bright that they almost seemed to glow, and ears that had only very small points on them but far larger wedges missing from the back.

  “Wizard no longer tree mother. I was once a maverick cast far from the guild and now I have the honour of serving as a mage of the wilds, for the village of Evensong.” He grabbed a pinch of the chain mail between his fingers and pulled it away from his chest to show them the mithril, and the heralds of the Wild Sage Rangers embossed into it. They needed to know all that he was.

  “Wards? Wizard?” Sumas was looking confused as he had every reason to be when man he had always known as a simple forester was suddenly revealed as something else, something far more grand in most people’s thoughts, even if he was learning by the day that there was nothing wrong with living a simple life. But Marjan could pay him no mind right then. There were more important things to find out and strangely he felt he had the place to ask.

  “How many of your brothers and sisters are here tree mother, and where did you come from?” He had to find out and soon because it looked as though his plans had changed. Initially he’d thought to just arrive, pick up everything he could carry of his library and then leave the way he’d come, but that was no longer possible. Sumas and his family could not travel as he did, and neither he suspected, could the dryads. They were capable warriors but against the enemy they faced that simply wasn’t enough. It was time to fall back on his alternate plan.

  “We left our grove in Amber Glade nearly thirty in number but now are only sixteen. Too many fell to the unnatural and we no longer have the strength to carry on, not in this strange forest. The unnatural are too many for us, and our skills not so strong as they should be, not when there is so much death. We were lucky to find this haven.” Of course they wouldn’t be as able as normal he realised. Dryads were fantastic at hiding, at being one with the woods and the trees, but when they were being hunted in a strange forest, one which they were not familiar with, and when the enemy numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands, that wouldn’t be enough. Not much would be.

  Apparently it hadn’t been enough in their home either, and he knew that Amber Glade was north and west of Gunderland, hidden somewhere within the Amber Expanse, a small but thick forest that graced the edges of the Liligoth mountains. It was said to have no roads through it, to be all but inaccessible by horse or even foot, and that only those who knew exactly where they were going would find it. But the enemy had obviously found it, in numbers. Of course that left him wondering about the other groves. One small grove of thirty dryads was barely the beginning of those who called that forest and many others home, and while he didn’t know how many groves and copses there were there, nor how many dryads, he was sure it had to run into the thousands if not the tens of thousands. Where were they? Still he knew that was a question he wouldn’t be able to get an answer to, not then, and it was better that they concentrate on heading for safety rather than dwell on the painful past.

  That naturally left him with only one thing to do, and only one way to do it. They had to leave and he had to transport them all. He had no idea if he could even do it, but looking at them, he knew it was no long
er a choice, and the sooner he began he decided, the better. Better not to give himself enough time for his doubts to grow.

  “Bring them here, all of your brothers and sisters, into the cottage. Its time to leave. And please tell me you did not destroy my tomes and scrolls. They could be valuable in the war ahead and I returned here to my home specifically for them.” Dryads and blacksmiths would have little use for such things, and he had sudden nightmares of them being used to light fires, not that dryads normally tolerated fires.

  “They were not damaged. We simply put them to one side. But how can we leave?” Silene was sounding puzzled and she had every reason to be, especially when someone she had only known as a woodsman was suddenly turning out to be a wizard. But even as she asked the elder dryad pursed her lips and let out a piercing whistle to call her brothers and sisters to her, and the question was forgotten.

  Marjan, didn’t answer her, just hitched Willow up to the balcony rail, making sure the knot was tight and then tied up his new friend beside her, before grabbing the saddle bags and the stones inside, while the tree mothers summoned the rest of their clan. Marjan and the blacksmith and his family watched the surrounding forest suddenly rustle as if it was alive, before a dozen or so dryads left their new trees where they had no doubt set up nests, to come running for the cottage. No doubt they thought something was wrong, but they would do him no harm Marjan knew, even if they believed him guilty of something. It wasn’t their way, which simply made the crime against them all the worse.

  As they covered the ground at a run, and they were surprisingly fleet of foot he noticed, not to mention well armed with their strangely twisted spears all glowing with earth magic, and the double recurved longbows similarly spelled, he wondered if he truly knew what he was doing. This was powerful magic, complex and tough, and whether he could pull it off was far from sure. But neither could he get these good people to safety any other way.

  There was nothing else to do.

  He placed the first of the carefully enchanted stones into the ground, dropping it to the soft grass and then pushing it down deep with his magic, before beginning to pace out the grid he’d decided on, exactly the same grid he’d paced and enchanted in Evensong a tenday before when he’d dreamed up this insanity. Fifty paces by fifty paces, a perfect square with an enchanted stone in each corner and another in the middle of each side. Eight stones, and then eight more, red ones this time, each about six inches inside the first ones.

  It took a while for him to complete the grid, he had to make sure in his mind that it matched the other one perfectly, but that was fine as he needed to be precise, and while he concentrated, it gave the others time to gather together in the cottage, or actually on its balcony, and whisper among themselves as they watched. They’d realised by then that he’d finished talking, and they didn’t want to disturb him as he went about his business.

  It was ironic in a way he decided as he started raising the portal magic all around gathering it into his essence, readying it. He’d always planned on doing this when he’d arrived, he just hadn’t known if it would work, if he had the strength, and so it had been very much his backup plan. Galloping home on Willow’s back just as he’d arrived had been his main plan. After all he knew that would work. But in his heart this had always been the option he’d preferred, now as his hand had been forced it was simply the one that had to work.

  “Is everyone inside the house?” Once he’d finished the grid and matched the spells to his satisfaction, he asked the vital question, having to make certain even though he was sure they were. There would be no second chances for any caught outside the grid once he began, and they would be trapped here. In truth though they weren’t inside the cottage, they were on his balcony, staring at him, but that was good enough. He also took care to double check the ties holding his new little friend to the balcony, and asked the tree mothers to make sure she didn’t flee when things got frightening as they soon would be to a young bear cub. But the cub seemed relaxed, in fact she was almost asleep, and somehow he had the feeling she would be all right with anything he did as long as he was near by.

  The moment he saw the nods from everyone he drew the lightning down on the outer dark stones, causing it to hit in brilliant showers of sparks, and causing everyone around him to jump and start whispering some more. He didn’t care about that though as he saw the one thing he needed to see most, forming exactly as he’d wanted, a shimmering wall of sparkling lightning.

  With a casual gesture to the small scrying pool by the cottage’s steps, he quickly raised the image of the matching grid he’d created in Evensong, just by the base of the Great Oak and not fifty paces from the stables, and the moment he saw that it was empty, raised exactly the same spell there, the only difference being that there it was the inner red rocks that were enchanted to carry the lightning barrier.

  Despite his doubts it worked perfectly, and he allowed himself a tiny smile of triumph as he saw the barrier sparkling brilliantly in the Evensong sun. One thing was sure, if the elves didn’t know where he was, or perhaps even that he’d left the town, they would soon, and they would also know he was busy. He only hoped they wouldn’t be too upset with him, or too harsh in their criticism of his actions. The elves didn’t tend to like surprises and this was going to be a big one.

  If it worked.

  Another quick series of spells raised the inner barrier around his cottage and the outer one in Evensong, only this time it was fire from the belly of the world itself that formed the shimmering orange walls, hot and heavy fire. He paused then for a moment to collect his thoughts, pleased with how smoothly things were going so far. His preparations had been perfect, and the portal magic thus far, was easier to hold than he’d expected. Maybe he had grown as a mage over the previous months. Of course that would be a poor explanation to give the elves.

  By this time he expected, Master Silas would no doubt be on his way along with his students and a host of elven elders, mages and druids, running in all likelihood, all knowing that something was up, feeling the magical charge in the air all around them and wondering what was going on. Master Silas would probably even guess what was happening, though not who. But a carefully arranged message locked into another enchanted stone would tell him the who of who was doing it and the why, the moment he or Harvas or another druid approached. Hopefully they wouldn’t be expecting a battle at least. Captain Saul too would be running, and he would surely be even less happy that his wizard was acting up again. No doubt there would be more lectures and many, many more hard weapons training sessions in his near future.

  But that was a problem to face later. For the moment he simply had to concentrate on the magic.

  “Grab on to something.” He shouted out the warning once the barriers were raised and had become solid, as he prepared the final magic of translocation, holding both the grids and all the magic of the sky and the earth in his spell, knowing that it might be a little rough. It might be more than that. He’d only ever done this a few times before and then it had only been a small translocation of just himself, and the magic involved in that was much less. But as large as this spell was so too was his desperation and he could use that. Strong emotion of any sort while it could distract, could be used to power a spell, and he needed all the strength that it could grant him.

  Sure enough, just as he grabbed all the magic to him and then started reversing it, swapping the fire for the lightning in both regions, the ground started shaking and he heard some startled yelps of alarm as things became a little dizzying. But he’d expected that, it was one of the side effects of the magic, the loss of a little sense of direction, and somehow he kept his feet. He guessed others might not have been so fortunate from the worried calls coming from the balcony but he paid them no mind, hoping only that they knew to remain calm and still, and that they didn’t let go of his new friend.

  Then, as the spell began to fight him and he forced it into unquestioning obedience, he heard some gasps, and kne
w the others had seen what they had surely never expected. All around them, just outside the barriers of lightning and earth fire, they could see the Allyssian forest suddenly changing to the Evensong Glade, the two images swapping places. Of course it was just the beginning of the spell, the two regions becoming closer but not yet one, and the image of the Allyssian forest returned a few heartbeats later as the land fought him. But that was exactly what he’d expected, and he forced the transfer once more.