The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5)

by A. Giannetti

  “I will run away if you look like that,” asserted Anthea eying him critically for a moment before turning away again. Unable to think what to say next, Elerian suddenly noticed that Anthea was now quivering in an odd way and making soft muffled noises. Fearful that he had reduced her to tears, Elerian crept up beside her, but when he could see her face again, he saw the gleam of laughter in her eyes not the shine of tears.

  “You are playing games with me again,” he accused indignantly.

  “You brought it on yourself,” replied Anthea, still laughing softly. “Poor Ascilius related in great detail all that he has suffered at your hands since the two of you left Tarsius. I thought it only fitting to administer a bit of your own medicine in return, especially since you spoiled Ascilius’s chance at true love at that inn where he met the serving maid.” The depth of Ascilius’s treachery took Elerian’s breath away, leaving him unable to respond for a moment.

  “I knew he was up to no good!” he thought to himself, torn between admiration for Ascilius’s craftiness and a desire for revenge on the Dwarf.

  “I would have ended my prank days ago, if you had not started acting as skittish as a young colt that sees a bridle for the first time when I mentioned my desire for a home and children,” continued Anthea when Elerian remained silent.

  “I was not skittish only startled,” protested Elerian, finding his voice at last. “I have never heard you take an interest in things of a domestic nature before.”

  “There is still much about me that you still do not know,” replied Anthea coolly. “If that frightens you, then you had best take yourself off now as Forian suggested.”

  “I cannot do that,” replied Elerian resignedly. “You have me under a spell which I cannot break. I will have to remain by your side even though I fear that you will eventually drive me mad.”

  “Expect no sympathy from me,” replied Anthea sharply. “Ascilius is your closest friend and yet you torment him constantly.”

  “Indeed I do,” replied Elerian, a gleam laughter suddenly appearing in his eyes as he took pleasure in both the pranks that he had played on the Dwarf and the warm bond of friendship that existed between them. “If he can be a good sport about my tricks then I suppose I can be no less accepting of yours,” he replied resignedly before tentatively placing his right arm around Anthea again. When she made no resistance, he gathered her close against him. Feeling her warm, firm form against him, their soft breaths coming in tandem, Elerian suddenly felt that all was right with the world again.

  “I wish that we could remain like this forever,” he thought to himself as Anthea drifted off into sleep. He remained awake and watchful the rest of the night, wondering at what the future held for the two of them. “An early death more likely than not,” suggested that part of his mind given to pessimism.

  When dawn lightened the sky, Elerian roused Anthea, who came instantly awake like a wild thing. Together, they returned to their camp where they woke the rest of the company. With hunger gnawing at their bellies, they forded the Elvorix and continued west along the fringes of the foothills on their right, unaware that their path was leading them directly toward Torquatus’s licantropes, who were now sleeping away the day in a shallow cave that was only twenty miles away.

  By noon, the weather turned damp with intermittent showers of cold rain that further depressed the mood of the company. Towards evening, cold, hungry, and tired the six companions approached the mouth of a narrow valley that ran through a gap in the mountains that now ran south across their path. A little used road ran down the center of the valley.

  “The highway before us leads to the valley of the Alba, but we dare not use it lest we be seen,” said Ascilius to his companions before leading the company into the mountains that rose up on their right. Keeping to the ridge tops, the Dwarf led the company west through a forest of oak, ash, and chestnuts until they reached a place where the slope before them flattened and widened, becoming a stony meadow that was bare of trees. To the right of the clearing a sheer cliff rose up several hundred feet into the air. At its base grew two great oaks.

  “We will not find a better place to pass the night than under those two trees,” observed Ascilius to his companions. When no one objected, he led the company to the cliff where he and his companions settled themselves between the huge roots of the trees, the leaves covering the massive branches spreading above them giving partial protection from the sporadic rain. Ending his illusion spell, Elerian then passed around his flask of aqua vitae. After each of them took a small quantity, his companions wrapped themselves in their blankets and cloaks, glumly preparing to endure a cold, wet, hungry night.

  Taking refuge between two great roots that encircled him like great, bark covered arms, Elerian sat contentedly with Anthea in his arms, her warm firm body pressed up against his chest and only her tousled, dark locks and bright eyes showing above the cloaks and blankets he wrapped around her. Of all the company, the two of them were the least affected by their hardships, for they were less troubled by cold than the others were, and the aqua vitae still satisfied most of their hunger.

  “We had best search for a cave tomorrow where we can have a fire,” suggested Elerian quietly to Anthea. “I think it will be safe enough now to rest and hunt for a day or two before we attempt to cross the Murus.”

  Instead of responding to his words, Anthea suddenly sat upright. When she turned to Elerian, he saw her blue eyes were almost black in the absence of sunlight and that the silver beech leaf resting below her throat shone with a pale light.

  “Something evil approaches,” she said quietly, her voice troubled. At that moment a long drawn out howl rose eerily from the valley below.

  “It may be only a pack of wolves hunting a stag,” replied Elerian reassuringly.

  “We should think about making some sort of defense just in case you are mistaken,” suggested Anthea uneasily.

  Another howl now rose from the valley below, undeniably closer than the first. Triarus, who had chosen to sleep near the cliff face, started out of sleep at the sound, involuntarily pressing himself against the wall of stone behind him. When he gave out a panicked cry, Elerian and Anthea looked his way, both of them starting when the little man suddenly disappeared. Of their own accord, their third eyes opened at the same moment, revealing a shifting wall of green about the size of a large door hanging in the air where Triarus had disappeared. As they sprang to their feet, the rest of the company, awakened by Triarus’s cry also leapt from their blankets. Rushing to the cliff face, they were greatly startled when the little man’s disembodied head suddenly popped out of the cliff face, seemingly hanging unsupported in the air two feet above the ground.

  “You will grow used to strange happenings if you remain in our company,” remarked Dacien dryly to Forian, when he noticed the Niadd’s amazement at the unusual sight before him.

  “There is a tunnel here,” said Triarus excitedly before withdrawing his head again.

  “An illusion is hiding the entrance,” explained Anthea to her companions as she made her way past them. Taking a step toward the cliff face, she, too, disappeared into what appeared to be solid stone. Elerian immediately followed her, as did the rest of the company after first satisfying themselves with a touch of their fingers that there was truly empty space before them.

  The six companions now found themselves in a man-high tunnel whose rough walls were illuminated by a small mage light that now floated above Anthea’s head. Wondering what she would find at the end of it, Anthea now set off down the passageway before her, closely followed by Elerian and Ascilius. The tunnel, which appeared to be an entirely natural formation as evidenced by the unworked stone of its walls, proved to be barely thirty feet long, ending in a small cave less than a dozen feet across.

  “Why would someone hide an ordinary cave entrance?” wondered Anthea aloud to Elerian when they stood before the back wall of the chamber.

  “Perhaps to hide what is happening in the cave,” s
uggested Elerian as he ran his right hand over the rough, stone wall in front of him. A fine line of gleaming silver immediately appeared in the rock beneath his long fingers, forming an arch that was man high and about four feet wide.

  “A magical door!” exclaimed Anthea excitedly to Elerian when she saw the gleaming line of argentum. “Can you open it?”

  “Let me try!” suggested Ascilius as he squeezed between Elerian and Anthea. “Magical doors are best left to Dwarves.” Raising his right hand, he began to cast one opening spell after another, but his initial confidence was soon replaced by frustration when the door before him remained stubbornly closed.

  “Perhaps it is an Elf door,” suggested Anthea gently. “Dwarves would be unlikely to use trees in their magic.”

  “How are we to open it then?” asked Ascilius with a frown. “I am entirely unfamiliar with Elven spells.”

  “Perhaps I can find the answer,” suggested Elerian. When Ascilius and Anthea turned his way, they saw that he held a spell book in his left hand. Written in gold letters on its soft brown cover was the name Dymiter. As Elerian began to riffle through the pages searching for opening spells, everyone on the company heard another chorus of howls, closer than before.

  “You would do well to hurry a bit,” suggested Ascilius nervously to Elerian. “We will have a grim time of it if we are trapped in this small space.”

  “It will take me even longer if you keep distracting me,” replied Elerian abstractedly. “There is an enormous amount of material here to search through. Long, tense moments, punctuated by more howls, passed before he suddenly paused in his search. Reading from a list of spells that he had found, Elerian began to cast opening charms, watching with his third eye as a golden orb flew from his right hand toward the door at the completion of each spell. Three times the sphere that he cast flared uselessly against the dark stone, but the fourth elicited a loud click from a hidden lock. Closing his third eye, Elerian saw a stone door swing inward to reveal another tunnel, the walls of this one bearing the marks of digging tools. The floor, however, was smooth and level throughout.

  “We should close the door and hide here,” suggested Dacien as a crescendo of howls rose up on the slope below the cliff.

  “We still risk discovery if that is a Goblin pack,” replied Elerian worriedly. “Once their masters discover this cave, it will be only a matter of time before they ferret out the hidden door. I think it would be best if I led them off while the rest of you wait for me here.”

  A chorus of objections rose up, but Elerian paid them no heed. After shedding all his gear and his mail shirt, he thrust his two knives into his boot tops.

  “Keep everyone here,” he said briefly to Ascilius. “And do not worry. Once I have led them away, I will return through the treetops where they cannot follow me.” Before Ascilius could object, Elerian stepped through the doorway, closing it behind him. He was startled to find Anthea, her mage light extinguished, waiting for him in the passageway, for he had not seen her slip through the doorway. Like him, she wore only a leather shirt and brown leather pants and boots.

  “You cannot go with me, Anthea,” objected Elerian at once. For an answer, she lithely bent and seized the knife in his left boot. Slipping it into her right boot top, she stood and looked at him defiantly.

  “Odd I never noticed how tall she is,” mused Elerian to himself, noticing for the first time that her eyes were almost on a level with his own. Another chorus of howls brought him back to reality, warning him not to delay any longer. “I can conceal her in the canopy if things go badly,” he consoled himself as he ran through the cave entrance, Anthea following at his heels like a shadow. Although the sky was still overcast, the rain had stopped, allowing Elerian to clearly distinguish the dark shape bounding through the trees on the far side of the clearing before him, its eyes gleaming like yellow lamps in the darkness.

  “A Goblin hound,” he thought to himself as he spun around to his left and raced across the clearing, Anthea easily matching his long strides. “I wonder how the creature and its pack mates managed to follow our trail through the rain?” he wondered to himself as he paused for a moment at the verge of the clearing, waiting for the hound and its companions to emerge into the open, for it was important that all of them see and follow him if his plan was to succeed.

  Seconds later, four enormous wolf like creatures bounded eagerly into the open. Elerian was dismayed to see that they were licantropes, kin to the monster he had slain in Anthea's cell and not hounds as he had first thought. Opening his third eye, he saw that their shades were an intense shade of crimson, a sign of their enormous strength and vitality. When an eager whine from the leader of the pack signaled to Elerian that he and Anthea had been seen, he sprang into the forest. As he raced through the dark wood covering the slope below him, his sidelong glances to his left reassured him that Anthea was following him easily. Behind them a chorus of howls rose up from the licantropes as they anticipated a fresh kill and warm blood to lap. When his sharp ears told him that the creatures had entered the forest behind him, Elerian expected the changelings to slow, but despite the rain and the wet ground, they continued to follow him and Anthea as if drawn after them on the end of a string.

  “They have an unnaturally acute sense of smell, but I have a trick that will defeat them,” thought Elerian to himself as he and Anthea raced down the mountainside through a wet, gray and black world, their night sight easily penetrating the darkness around them. When they reached the flatlands below, Elerian turned toward the east, guided by his innate sense of direction. The footing was less treacherous here on level ground, and he and Anthea soon opened a small lead on their pursuers.

  His feet light and his body responding instantly to every demand made upon it, Elerian now found himself enjoying the race through the forest in spite of the dangerous creatures that pursued him and Anthea. Overcome by the same feelings, Anthea suddenly sped past him so that she now ran in front of him, setting a pace that was even faster than before, as if she was determined to test the limits of her speed and endurance. Like a lodestone, Elerian’s gaze was drawn to her speeding form, dwelling on her long legs and trim flanks as her lithe muscles flexed and swelled beneath the soft, supple leather covering them. As if she sensed his gaze, Anthea briefly looked back over her left shoulder, her dark eyes filled with excitement engendered by the chase blended with contentment with the attraction she held for him. As the miles and the hours flew by, however, even the wonderful, half Elven bodies of Elerian and Anthea began to tire, and the relentless pack behind them began to draw closer.

  “If they sight us, we will never lose them,” thought Elerian to himself. Judging that the time had come to lose their pursuers, he called out to Anthea.

  “Take to the trees! It is time to lose these creatures.” At once Anthea leaped high onto the trunk of a great chestnut that appeared on her right. Elerian followed with his own lithe spring. Drawing themselves onto a thick limb twenty feet off the ground, the two of them sped off to the south, running in single file across broad, twisting, bark covered limbs with Elerian now in the lead. Expecting the licantropes to continue east, Elerian was dismayed when, just out of sight behind him and Anthea, the howls of the changelings told him that the creatures had followed their path exactly and were continuing their relentless pursuit.

  “Some other means besides the power of scent draws them on,” thought Elerian grimly to himself. Growing worried for the first time, he spoke urgently to Anthea, calling out to her over his left shoulder.

  “Return to the cave! The creatures following us have been ensorcelled, following us through magic instead of scent. I will draw them off and join you later.” For an answer, Anthea suddenly leaped onto a limb to her left and sped past Elerian before jumping lithely across the six foot gap between them so that she now ran in front of him.

  “Anthea, this is no game!” called out Elerian despairingly, but she only increased her speed, fairly flying down the broad, twisting bran
ches in front of her, perfectly balanced even when she ran lightly over some branch barely the width of her narrow palm. Grimly, his gaze fixed on Anthea’s flying form, Elerian set himself to keep up, at the same time wracking his brain for some plan which would allow them to escape from their unnatural pursuers.

  “She will fail eventually, for she is still not recovered from her ordeal in Torquatus’s dungeons,” thought Elerian anxiously to himself. “Even if the beasts pursuing us cannot reach us in the trees once we stop running, they are still certain to bring their masters down on our heads unless I can draw them away.” Noting that Anthea had all her attention fixed on the twisting path ahead of her, Elerian began gradually to slow his pace and at the same time bore his right, opening a wide gap between them two of them without attracting her attention. Listening carefully to the pursuit behind him Elerian found, as he had hoped, that the pack was now behind him, ignoring Anthea.

  “They are drawn to me alone, then,” thought Elerian to himself, a plan taking shape in his mind. “Farewell my love,” he thought to himself as he began to slow his footsteps even more. Ahead of him Anthea ran on without looking back, determined to give Elerian no opportunity to send her away. When she vanished into the leafy canopy, Elerian stopped suddenly. After retreating to the trunk of the tree which sprouted the wide limb he was standing on, he raced down to the ground, dropping rather than climbing from one handhold to another. Rasor in his left hand, he raised his right arm as the first of the licantropes appeared between the trees before him, running on all fours. Opening his third eye, Elerian saw a small golden sphere fly from his right hand, speeding toward the changeling’s broad, hairy chest. He was disappointed but not surprised when the charm flared harmlessly against the crimson shield spell that instantly covered the licantrope’s shaggy form.

  “This Goblin was a mage before it became a beast,” thought Elerian to himself as he reached up and seized the licantrope by its corded, hairy throat with his left hand when it sprang on him. Holding back its snapping jaws with sinewy strength, he thrust Rasor into its right eye before it could tear him apart with its claws. The argentum covering the hilt and inlaid in Rasor’s gleaming blade flashed like white fire as the knife sank hilt deep, sliding both through the creature’s shield spell and its stony flesh. At once Elerian sank to his knees, borne down both by the enormous weight of the mortally wounded changeling and a wave of weakness that swept over him as his magical blade drank deep of his powers. A second licantrope now wrenched both its dying companion and Rasor from Elerian’s weakened grasp.