The Faithful Traitor (Wizard & Dragon Book 2)

by Robert Don Hughes

  The garden narrowed on either side of them but did not immediately close before them. Indeed, it seemed to funnel them forward, as if they walked a carefully tended pathway through the jungle. This made the walking itself easy but made them feel distinctly uneasy, as if they wandered into a trap or something watched them from beyond the bushes. As Seagryn let his mind run through lengthy speculations about the nature and appearance of the masters, he wondered if anyone was listening to him. ‘Yes,’ said a voice right behind him, and he stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?” Nebalath whispered.

  “You didn’t hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A — voice. Inside my head, I guess.” He started moving forward again, his head down in thought. “I believe one of the masters just spoke to me.”

  “You mean they haven’t spoken to you before?” Fylynn asked, and both wizards looked at her. “They’ve been chattering at me all morning. At least, I guess it’s them.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about it?”

  Fylynn shrugged. “I suppose I just assumed they were already speaking to you as well. Didn’t you dream about them?”

  “No,” Seagryn said, vaguely disappointed. He couldn’t explain why it bothered him, but he somehow felt rejected because they’d not spoken to him before. Nebalath’s next question revealed they’d not been talking with him, either.

  “What are they saying?” the old wizard asked.

  “Oh, things like ‘turn back,’ ‘depart the island immediately,’ ‘you’re in grave danger,’ ‘don’t trust these two wizards’ — that sort of thing.”

  “And you’ve not answered back?” Seagryn asked, amazed.

  “Of course — to them directly. In my head.”

  Nebalath and Seagryn exchanged a look of deepest concern. “What do you make of it all?” Nebalath finally asked her.

  Fylynn raised her eyebrows. “I just figure we must be going in the right direction.”

  ‘Why were you such a fool?’ the voice in Seagryn’s head said. ‘This morning you will die.’

  “They just spoke to me again,” Seagryn murmured.

  “And to me,” Fylynn said.

  “And to me,” Nebalath whispered, his head rolling backward and his eyes rising toward the sky. Suddenly those eyes focused. “Look!” he said, and pointed.

  A majestic structure loomed above the tops of the trees before them — a tall, slender cone. It appeared to be shaped of the same glistening white stone the people of Emerau used for their houses. In the dawn’s light, it glowed a rich violet-pink. “That’s where we’re going,” Fylynn said quietly. “I expect someone will be waiting there for us —”

  As if in answer to her words there came a deafening roar. The sound emanated from all around them, and while none of them had ever heard its like they each could tell the roar was a chorus of many living voices — frightful voices. Even Nebalath trembled. “What was that?” he managed to whisper at last.

  “The collected anger of the masters,” someone nearby answered them, and they all turned that way to see their purple host from the day before. His face looked gaunt, hollowed out by grief. His ready smile had disappeared. His hair tangled around his shoulders in matted knots, as if he’d not had time to groom it. He spoke somberly, the way Seagryn had been taught to address mourners at a funeral. “I told you — this place is forbidden.”

  “Who are these masters?” Nebalath demanded. “What are they!”

  “They’re huge green cats,” Fylynn supplied, and both Nebalath and Seagryn looked at her in surprise. “I told you,” she explained, “I dreamed of them all night.”

  “Green cats?” Seagryn said. “Like the one Kerily had in —”

  “That was a kitten. These are full grown.”

  “And very angry,” their guide added with great resignation in his voice. Then he turned toward the lustrous cone. “Shall we go?”

  “It’s forbidden, yet they’ll let you lead us there?” Nebalath asked.

  “The masters permit no encroachment on their sleeping chamber. They’ll kill us all. I simply thought you might wish to look more closely at the place that you’ve come so far to die for. Then again, perhaps it is that I want to see it myself, to try to understand the why of my own fate.”

  “Why did you come if it will cost you your life, too?” Seagryn asked, feeling the tickle in the back of his mind of that grinding guilt that constantly plagued him. The man’s answer sent it pumping through him like blood.

  “I had no choice. The masters summoned me to greet you here and explain their temple to you. I know things about it now I’ve never known, nor had any wish to learn. Since I do — I die with you. Shall we go?” He turned back toward the shining monument and started walking. They followed him, unwilling to look at one another.

  After only a few minutes of walking they stepped out of the garden and into a grassy meadow. The cone rose high above them here, and they could see now how massive it was. Seagryn tried to peer inside one of the three openings in its base visible from this side, but the interior of the cone appeared to be black. As they walked closer to the structure they could see that its face was not as smooth and featureless as it had appeared from a distance. They could see the cracks where the gigantic sheets of stone had been titled together. Seagryn started to walk up to it but froze when a menacing green form slipped suddenly out of that shadowy interior and stopped to stare at him. Then it roared.

  Seagryn had seen teeth much bigger than those the huge cat showed him. He had, after all, gazed into the drooling jaws of Vicia-Heinox. But he’d never seen eyes the likes of these on any beast. They were not human eyes — they were more. A deep, rich violet in color, they gazed at him with absolute comprehension of what took place that moment in his thoughts. At the same time Seagryn felt the beast — the being? — did not understand him at all. Not because it lacked the capacity; rather, it did not choose to be understanding. It chose to be enraged.

  ‘You are a fool,’ it thought to him, and he heard the thought expressed clearly. ‘All people are fools.’

  Seagryn could not take his eyes off this threatening creature, so he felt rather than witnessed the other green cats that slipped out of the cone or the forest to encircle them. He heard the guide speaking behind him, intoning in a flat, listless voice words the man obviously was being required to repeat.

  “These are the masters — the true Emeraudes. We are their pets — and their responsibilities. They rule us not by choice, but because they must — they hear the thoughts of each of us, and hear them constantly, their minds ever filling with the ridiculous prattle of the world of men. They had no respite until they found the spores which, when inhaled, allow them to sleep in silence. Many years ago they guided the strongest men of the land to erect this structure, to give the green spores a place to grow and flourish. They then devoured the builders to erase the knowledge of this tower from the memory of my people. The green powder you came seeking fills all the cracks of this palace of sleep, this temple of peace and quiet. Your coming has disturbed their rest — again. As a result we all must die.”

  “Perhaps not all of us.” Nebalath smiled grimly, and he angled toward the face of the cone, his eyes watching the Emeraude that was nearest to him. Fylynn followed him, sticking close, and Seagryn and their guide moved too, watching the slowly closing circle, not the way they were going. Thus the little group moved as a clump, and the ring of cats tightened around them, pinning them to the wall.

  ‘You think to grab a handful of the powder and disappear?’ one of the Emeraudes thought toward Nebalath, but Seagryn heard the thought, too, and he looked at the older wizard accusingly.

  “It was just a thought.” Nebalath shrugged, glancing at Seagryn. His gaze shot immediately back to the nearest Emeraude, who seemed to be preparing to pounce. For the first time since he’d known the man, Seagryn had seen true terror in the old powershaper’s face.

  Fylynn put her back to the cone, her
own face tense. “If I’d not come the two of you could just grab some of the stuff and disappear — couldn’t you?”

  Seagryn backed up to the glossy surface beside her. “As I’ve tried to tell Nebalath, I’ve not yet discovered how to perform that little feat.”

  ‘But you are too noble to try, in any case,’ the Emeraude who stared him down supplied. ‘Your foolish loyalty condemns you. You think to stay and die rather than to abandon this corpulent woman to our vengeance.’

  “Corpulent!” Fylynn gasped, her back stiffening and her jaw jutting forward. Then she glared at Seagryn. “Was that your descriptive thought or that of this foul feline?” Seagryn did not reply but watched as she slung a water bottle down off her shoulder and uncapped it.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “I’m going to throw water on them,” Fylynn huffed, scowling into the nearest pair of violet eyes. “You cats hate water, don’t you? Well, have some!” She grabbed the container tightly with both hands and pitched it forward, throwing an arc of water out toward that face. The huge cat nimbly danced aside, and Fylynn looked at Seagryn. “Makes you wish we’d brought along that little rat-dragon, doesn’t it?”

  A powerful roar shook them all again, as they simultaneously heard the thought, ‘What are you doing?’

  Fylynn glanced to the side to see that Nebalath had turned his back to the threatening Emeraudes and was facing the cone itself. He had tied a scarf over his nose and opened an empty leather bag looped around his neck, and was now scooping handfuls of green powder out of a crack.

  “You have plenty of the stuff,” his muffled reply came. “I have a friend in Pleclypsa who needs some.”

  All the Emeraudes roared at that, and the entire jungle around them trembled at the sound. Effortlessly one cat leaped toward Nebalath’s back, jaws gaping wide and claws extending forward. The old wizard was doomed.

  Or would have been. The cat never made it. Instead it found itself spitted in midair upon a huge, pointed horn, then tossed backward over its fellows to land wounded and bleeding on the edge of the jungle beyond. The ring of cats dodged outward but did not flee, as Seagryn in his tugolith form stepped out before his human companions and looked balefully into many pairs of violet eyes. “Fylynn!” he rumbled in the deep bass voice of his altershape, “take the purple guide and duck inside the cone! They can’t read your thoughts in there — they’ll fall fast asleep. It’s your only chance of escape! Nebalath — you go, too. I’ll hold these creatures off as long as I can!”

  “I really hate to do this,” Nebalath grumbled behind him.

  “Go!” Seagryn roared, his head lowered and his point shifting from cat to cat to cat. The Emeraudes had taken his measure now and closed around him. In another moment they would be on him, their claws ripping through his scaly hide and their teeth tearing at his flesh. He knew he was dead, but he would take some of these ferocious Emeraudes with him. He promised himself, however, one last brief glimpse of Elaryl in the moment before all his senses fled.

  “I suppose you’ve gathered that I never wanted to reveal my altershape,” Nebalath confessed.

  “Go! Run! Now!” Seagryn rumbled, but Nebalath seemed amazingly nonchalant in this moment of doom.

  “There’s been reason for that, of course. It’s a shame, it really is, but I very much fear I shall have to take it now —”

  An Emeraude leaped. Seagryn speared it and tossed it aside so quickly that the tip of his wicked horn looked like a blur. It was ready to pierce and discard the second leaper, and the third, but he knew he’d not withstand all of them. He stepped back, planting his huge rump against the wall of the cone and hunching his neck in preparation for the next charge.

  It never came. Instead he heard the most horrible mewling, moaning, screeching howl he’d ever heard in his life, and the cats melted before him into the forest. Before he could ask himself the reason, he inhaled it. The stench!

  It was a smell unlike any his olfactory sense had ever been required to endure. In the past, Seagryn had stood in the midst of a vast host of tugoliths, and the aroma of that gathering had so benumbed his nostrils that he’d felt a little dizzy. Yet there was no comparison. The memory of that stink, great as it had been, seemed in this moment but a brief, distasteful whiff upon the breeze. The billowing odor that now rolled up and around this cone would doubtless taint this place for eons. A monumental stench, a mythical stench, a stench of almost mystical proportions bore witness to the fact that old Nebalath’s altershape was none other than that most insidious of furry forest creatures — a mudgecurdle.

  Mudgecurdles looked like bunny rabbits. Exactly like bunny rabbits, with long, floppy ears and wriggling noses and cute little powder-puff tails. But blessings upon any poor creature within sight of a mudgecurdle when it fluffed its erne little puff. So horrible was the aroma of the mudgecurdle that it had made all bunnies suspect. Rabbits proliferated in areas where mudgecurdles had been spotted — or rather, scented — with the result that they were a terrible nuisance to grain farmers. But what was a peasant to do? The risk of chasing a bunny from one’s barn was simply too high. “You mudgecurdle!” had become the foulest of epithets, meaning as it did both traitor and stinker in one thought. Seagryn immediately took his human form again for one compelling reason: as a tugolith he couldn’t hold his nose.

  The clearing around the cone remained empty of Emeraudes. The purple guide, Seagryn was told later, had fled screaming. Fylynn had taken refuge within the temple of peace and quiet and could be heard clearly, gagging and retching, while Nebalath — human again — leaned against the wall of the cone and studied his fingernails self-consciously. He refused to meet Seagryn’s eyes as he quietly murmured, “Shall we go?”

  Chapter Twelve: ELARYL’S STAND

  “IF there’s anything to you at all, why don’t you do something?” Elaryl shouted as she shook her fist at the sky.

  Weeks had passed since she’d been visited by the strange old wizard who called himself Seagryn’s friend. In the days since his last appearance shed waited in vain for some new message from Nebalath concerning Seagryn’s safety and whereabouts. Her patience — with both Seagryn and the Power — was growing thin indeed. And since Seagryn was unavailable, Elaryl blasted the Power daily with her frustrations. The rooftop of the new Talarath mansion made an excellent place to ventilate these feelings. She didn’t know whether the Power was up, down, inside her or all around her, but wherever the Power was, on the rooftop she could at least shout.

  “My father taught me you were the most powerful agency in the cosmos! I believed it, Seagryn believed it — all Lamath believes it still! So what are you doing about my husband?”

  “My Lady,” a tiny voice called hesitantly, and Elaryl whirled to face her maid.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “Can’t you see I’m talking to someone out here?”

  Her maid — a slender brunette named Jocelath — trembled at these words but shook her head. She stood inside the dome that roofed the stairway down into the house. Elaryl knew that on no account would Jocelath come outside. She also knew why, and it greatly irritated her. She turned her back on her maid and continued her conversation with the Power silently. As she knew it would, the maid’s plea came again — more urgently. “My Lady!”

  Elaryl spun around again. “What?”

  “My Lady, the dragon has been seen about, and … Please — my Lady. Won’t you please come inside?”

  Elaryl again turned her back on the curly-haired girl and walked decisively to the battlements. “Why should I?” she demanded, peering at the western horizon of Lamath. It had been in that direction that Seagryn had departed. Though she knew in her head he’d traveled all about the world since that time, emotionally she couldn’t help but watch the west for his return.

  “It will do no one any good if your husband returns to find you’ve been eaten —”

  “Maybe I want to be eaten, Jocelath! Have you thought about that?”

 
; “My Lady, don’t even joke about —”

  Elaryl ignored the girl’s protests, continuing, “Maybe I consider that the shortest route to the Power’s presence! I hear certain idiots are thinking such these days …”

  Jocelath anxiously scanned that portion of the sky she could see through the doorway. “My Lady, please! You know that the dragon has recently been sighted very near this region, and if you care at all about your personal safety you’ll —”

  “Who’s that?” Elaryl snapped, for in pacing around the low wall she’d noticed a cloud of dust on the road to the north. That usually meant riders from the capital city, which in turn usually meant news. Before Jocelath could finish her plea, Elaryl had bolted past her on her way down the stairs to investigate.

  “Father!” she shouted as she hustled down the hallway past Talarath’s apartments. “Riders from the north.” She hurried down to the next landing.

  “Riders?” Talarath responded, popping his dour head out the door and calling down after her. “I wasn’t expecting any — any riders …”

  She didn’t pause as she continued down to the first floor, but she did feel troubled. It seemed to Elaryl that her father’s tone of voice had changed markedly in recent weeks. He seemed so much more uncertain about things than she’d ever heard him sound before. What had so shaken his confidence that he hesitated now before he spoke? “Nothing,” she grunted to herself as she marched down the entry way and opened the door. “It’s my imagination.” Or was it that Talarath was getting old? She had a difficult time permitting herself that thought — especially with Seagryn off so far away …