The Lady's Man

by Greg Curtis

  “Myral, people say that I created an order through my teachings and my magic. They're wrong. I didn't create anything at all. The Order created itself around me. And people call it the Order of the Lady, as if it is my Order. But again they're wrong. It is only my Order in that I am a part of it. Just as is Yorik. Just as are many thousands of others. I serve.”

  “That's why I eventually left the world and returned to my own realm. So that I could serve the Order.”

  That caught Myral's notice. He'd wondered when he'd awoken how things could have changed so much and why she was no longer in the world. It had been for the longest time the only thing on his mind. And for the life of him he could think of no reason that she would leave and return to her home. Not the woman who had so completely loved the world that that love had almost consumed her.

  When she had walked as the dryad prophetess with no name, she had been a creature of pure love. A woman who would stop and stare at a flower for hours and days, enraptured by its beauty. Who would fall to her knees at the sight of a new born baby simply out of awe. Who would simply stand and stare at couples as they walked hand in hand, entranced by the emotion they felt. For fifty years she had been the same, the wonder never growing old with her. And he could not understand how she could have ever left that behind. He had asked of course, but she had not answered him. Now it seemed she finally would and despite everything else that was happening in the world he was curious. So instead of interrupting her with questions he listened.

  “You had begun your long sleep by then and I knew that despite your words it would not be for just a few short months. It would not even be for a few short years. But still I could have stayed. I could have spent those years in the world, exploring and learning and savouring as I wished until you finally returned to me. I wanted to wait. But I couldn't.”

  “The longer I remained in your world the more I became aware that for all its beauty there was darkness. Terrible darkness. There were so many who would kill without remorse. Who would unleash terrible evils upon others. Who would shatter the bonds of family. Tear husbands from their wives, children from their families. Murderers, slavers, corrupt officials and nobles. And too often those who should have been there to stop these things happening instead ignored them or worse participated.”

  “It could not be permitted.”

  “By then as I was wandering and talking with people, telling them what I knew, others were talking with me and telling me the same things. And I was surprised that there were so many who held exactly the same values and dreams that I did. And that they were willing to fight for those things.”

  “But I was more surprised to find that I was willing to fight for them.”

  “That is a thing unknown among my kind. We do not fight. We do not get involved. We watch and take our amusement in that way. It is enough for us. But it was no longer enough for me. After fifty years of wandering the world it was far too little.”

  “So I decided to fight. And it was then that I knew I could not remain in the world. Because while I walked as a mortal woman, my power was limited. I could have fought, but only as a single mortal woman. And as such I could not have fought as I needed to. However back in my realm in my own form I am a thousand times more powerful. I could fight as I needed to.”

  “But to enter your world in my own form would be to do terrible damage to it. I would destroy that which I love simply by my presence. I could not do that either.”

  “There was only one way that I could fight for what I loved without destroying it, and that was to allow others of your people to fight in my place with the aid of my magic granted to them. It was not what I wanted. I did not want to return to my realm. I wanted to stay and enjoy your world. But it was what I had to do.”

  “It was then that I made the bargain and a bond was created between myself and the rest of the Order. I would remain in my realm and through that bond impart a fraction of my strength to those who fought for my hopes and shared my dreams.”

  “It is hard. The toughest thing I have ever done. That I still do. I yearn to return to your world. To once more wear the flesh of a mortal woman and walk its fields and speak with its people. To eat and drink in its wonder. I hunger for that pleasure in a way that I cannot describe. But in five hundred years I have never done so, and I will not. If I am to fight for what I hold precious I cannot.”

  “This is how I know that Yorik will not yield to death or despair. For five hundred years I have not yielded to my desires, and if necessary for five hundred or five thousand more I still will not yield. I cannot take the path of my desires. I cannot yield in the battle. Life and love – these things must be protected no matter the cost. And in the same way Yorik cannot. None of my children can. It is simply not who we are.”

  “I am heartsick for my child, his pain is beyond bearing. But I know he will endure. And when he needs me I will be there. But until then, he knows what he must do and he will do it. As will I.”

  She left him then, but her words lingered.

  Was she right? Could she be right? It seemed impossible to Myral as he sat there staring into the fire and occasionally glancing at the broken paladin collapsed in front of it. And yet he believed her. She might not be right, but she was true.

  And all he could do was hope that was enough.

  Chapter Twenty Five.

  Three days later the rangers finally made it down from the plateau into the lowlands, and all of them were grateful for the sight of the forest in front of them. In the end they were elves and the forests were their home. They felt safe in them. And on the plateau where so much of it was open to the sky and there weren't a lot of trees, they didn't feel safe. Not when there was a dead wizard somewhere out there who could kill them all in a heartbeat.

  To add to their woes they had only five horses for the nine of them. Genivere had sent out a call through her magic, but some of the horses had been too far away to respond. So most of them were sharing horses, something that would have been less of a problem if they'd had saddles and bridles. But with no saddles and therefore no stirrups, loosely tied halters made of woven reeds, and two of them on each horse, if they had to flee the chances were that many of them would fall off and the horses would be slowed. Luckily they hadn't had to flee so far.

  The dead wizard it seemed had gone, and there weren't many predators on the plateau.

  But as they'd followed the gently sloping land of long grass and wild flowers down towards the forest, Genivere had started to worry about what lay ahead. She'd begun to realise that the forest wasn't quite as it should be. But it took a while for her to realise just how wrong it was.

  “Blessed Mother!”

  Genivere was shocked when they finally made it down the pass from the plateau and she could see clearly all that was wrong with the forest. From the distance things had looked strange; the greenery less green than it should have been, the air for some reason hazy, and she'd worried that the forest they would find would be damaged in some way. But up close she could see that it was worse than she'd guessed. Far worse.

  The trees were wilting, dying in front of her. She could feel the sickness, the approach of death all around her. Worse she could see a blight spreading through them. It was some sort of rust, a brownish red stain slowly crawling its way up tree trunks and out onto the foliage, sucking the life out of the forest, tree by tree. It looked terrible, slimy and putrid, and she could even smell its disease. And it was everywhere. From the moment they entered the forest, she could see the trees all around, slowly changing colour, the rust creeping all over them, the healthy green disappearing beneath a clinging river of foetid disease that was eating away at them.

  As one of dryad blood she had of course seen disease in trees before, and she had been taught the various cures. But this was different. First, because it was so vast – and she could feel the sickness spreading out ahead of her in every direction – but second and possibly worse, because it was affecting all the trees. Not
just one variety, not just oaks or pines, ashes or redwoods, but all of them. The whole forest. Every tree. Even the small patches of scrubby bush surrounding them. That was something she'd never seen before, nor even heard of.

  The haze though was more troubling because she knew what it was. It was the lingering smoke from fires that had raged out of control, and she could see the remains of burnt trees all around.

  Fire was always a horror for a dryad, and something they watched very carefully. The thought of the forests, of their homes burning to the ground was a nightmare. Even more so for them than the elves. They didn't build houses in the manner of the humans and elves. They grew them, shaping the trees themselves to form the structures they needed. So if the forest burned so too did their homes.

  But this time she knew it was the dryads themselves who had set the flames. They had tried to burn the disease out, which meant that every other curative they had at their disposal had failed. It was a sign of desperation. They had seen the disease spreading and been unable to stop it by any other means. But even worse than that, because there were more trees all around, and more rust covering them, she knew that it too had failed. Fire after fire had been set, and one by one they had burnt out the disease wherever they could to stop it spreading. And yet nowhere was there a sign that the rust had been stopped. Even the burnt out blackened stumps were covered with rust.

  Clearly the disease was unnatural. She didn't know what it was, but she could feel the wrongness in it. Even diseases had their place in the world. But this had no place. In fact it reminded her of the undead in some way. A disease of living death slowly consuming everything in its path. That was something she had never before heard of. But she could see it happening in front of her.

  It was like a festering wound on the land, and like all physicians Genivere knew that she had to understand the disease affecting her patient in order to cure it. That was going to require knowledge she didn't have. Knowledge that she wasn't sure anyone had. Knowledge that she could only find in one place. In the forest itself.

  The captain cleared her throat to ask the obvious questions, but stopped when she saw the look on Genivere's face. Genivere ignored her and the others as she prepared herself.

  Then when she was ready, fearing what she would find but knowing that she had to understand this plague, Genivere let her thoughts reach out to the forest all around her. Immediately she discovered that as bad as things looked, they were actually worse. The rust – the disease – had extended beyond just the trees and bushes she could see with her eyes. It was actually beneath her feet, extending its way through the roots of the trees, reaching into and killing the very soil that supported life. If it wasn't stopped the land would never grow anything ever again, and if it spread too far, the people would starve. She already knew it was spreading. She could feel it reaching out slowly, clawing at the fresh growth all around, and slowly consuming it. A carpet of living death slowly smothering everything.

  That was too much for her. Despite her best efforts she couldn't concentrate when she could feel that cold, clammy grip of death creeping towards her. She shuddered uncontrollably, her flesh reacting to the slimy disease as if it was crawling on her and not the trees. The feeling brought her quickly back to herself and after that she knew there was no way she could let her awareness flow back into the forest again. Not for a while anyway. Not until she was prepared to feel the touch of disease.

  “What is this?”

  The others had seen her return to the world and they were curious.

  “Death.”

  There was no other answer she could give. It was death; the death of the entire forest and maybe much more. But it wouldn't be enough for them and she tried to marshal her thoughts into some form of order.

  “It's a disease of some sort. A plague that consumes the very essence of life. Almost like the stench of the undead. And it's spreading.”

  “The dark wizard? Mayfall?”

  For an answer Genivere just shrugged. It made sense in some way that it was him. After all that they'd seen, it would seem unlikely that two such impossible events so close together weren't linked in some way. But as to how he'd done it or why, she had no idea. Surely whatever he was, he needed to eat too, and this if it spread too far, would stop that happening.

  “What do we do?”

  At last someone asked a question she could at least answer, and Genivere was grateful for that.

  “We find my grandmother's people. There's a copse a few leagues east of here called Sunnybrook. They can probably help us, give us food and shelter for a bit. They may know more about this blight. And they can probably also contact the elders at Hammeral, and tell them what's happened.”

  That last was important now that so many of the eldest and wisest were making their home there. If anyone could come up with a plan, it would be them. It would have to be them.

  But even as she suggested it Genivere was worried. Worried for them. This sort of disease so close to their copse must have brought them out here. They must have seen the destruction and acted. They were surely responsible for setting the fires. And if they'd run into Mayfall assuming that this was his handiwork, it would not have gone well for them.

  “We should hurry.”

  Chapter Twenty Six.

  Sunnybrook was gone when they finally made it there. Not abandoned, not destroyed or burnt out but completely gone. Torn from the world as if by a giant hand, and what remained behind was nothing more than wreckage and dirt. Where once there had been giant stands of beautiful redwoods standing tall and proud, now all that remained were only holes in the ground, hundreds if not thousands of craters. Each one she knew was what was left after one of those magnificent trees had been ripped out of the good earth, roots and all, but as to what could do such a thing she had no idea. Nor did she have any idea as to where the people were. But she feared that knowledge.

  There were no bodies at least. For that she was grateful. So hopefully they'd got away before whatever had happened had happened. But it was also possible that since they lived in those glorious trees, that many of them had simply been ripped loose from the ground with them, and she could see no sign of them either. All that remained were mounds of dirt and craters for as far as the eye could see, while here and there a few lonely patches of grass stood out. The only green in a landscape of death.

  “What happened here?”

  Genivere wished people would stop asking her questions like that. She had no answer to give them, and once more had to settle for shrugging. But then they asked an even worse question.

  “So how much further is the copse?”

  She turned to look at the soldier, realising he didn't understand, and maybe some of her pain showed on her face. Perhaps that was why he looked away hurriedly. Still she had to give voice to the awful truth. It had to be said.

  “This is ...” She stopped in mid sentence and then corrected herself. “This was Sunnybrook.”

  A town of several thousand dryads; gone without a trace. Men, women, children and their homes. Ripped from the world like a weed being pulled up by a gardener. She didn't want to say it. She didn't want to even think it.

  For the longest time the others stared at her, and then again at what had once been a copse, and nothing was said. But they were all thinking the same thing. That the town had been destroyed and the people with it. It was a monstrous evil but then they had already met a dead wizard with impossible power and a black heart. They had watched him smash their comrade into a stone wall, no doubt killing him, and then they themselves had been hurled about like pebbles by the merest trace of his power. They had travelled through a forest being eaten by disease, and now they had found a destroyed town. It was just one more evil in a world full of darkness.

  “Mayfall.”

  The captain whispered his name on the wind, naming their enemy at least. But even if she was right, and as terrible as he was he might only be a part of the nightmare that assailed them, there was not
hing they could do about him. He was simply too powerful.

  No one answered her and the silence continued.

  “We should ask the foretellers and farseers. If anyone can tell us of this wizard they can.”

  Genivere thought for a while, and then some more before dismissing the idea. But in the end she still shook her head. “I don't know.”

  The suggestion wasn't out of hand. Thus far the foretellers had been only somewhat reliable, but they were still the best hope they had of understanding what was happening in the world. Of how a dead wizard could be walking around, murdering their friends and destroying a town and perhaps starting a plague. They were the only hope in truth. But even if their words could have been trusted there was still a problem with asking them. They were fighting the plague of the undead, trying desperately to work out how the Dark One was doing what he was doing, and what his next move would be. Did they have time to wonder about a dead wizard no matter how powerful?