by A. Giannetti
“My death will buy Anthea’s safety,” Elerian thought stoically to himself as the beast’s dripping jaws gaped wide to engulf his face and throat. Too weak to raise even one hand as he looked down its gapping gullet, Elerian blinked in surprise when a slender hand wrapped around a silver haft struck the changeling between its fierce yellow eyes, the blade of the knife piercing like a lance the red shield spell that sprang up to oppose it. Its brain destroyed, the creature fell limply toward Elerian, striking him with its long head and massive shoulders as the hand holding the knife slipped away from its hilt. Borne over onto his back, Elerian looked up in time to see Anthea collapse onto the ground by his right side.
“You will not leave me behind so easily,” said Anthea softly to Elerian as she laid her head on his right shoulder. Drained by the power Acer had drawn from her to slay the changeling, she remained there without moving.
“You should have run,” replied Elerian despairingly as he raised his head and looked past the slain licantropes lying by his feet, for racing on all fours toward him and Anthea were the two remaining changelings, eyes gleaming and mouths gaping wide to seize the helpless prey before them.
THE VALLEY
Drawing his right arm tightly around Anthea’s slim shoulders, Elerian felt a fierce rage surge through him, most of it directed at the two approaching beasts that were about to end both his life and Anthea’s, but some of it directed at himself for his inability to stop them. Time seemed to slow then, as the armband that he wore on his left shoulder, so familiar to him now that he seldom realized it was there, suddenly grew warm against his skin, as if responding to his anger. His third eye sprang open, revealing shafts of green light thick as a man’ forearm shooting briefly from the trunks of the trees around him, the beams all converging on his hidden armband. As they faded away, another greater shaft of light, this one originating from his talisman, shot through the sleeve of his leather shirt, striking a great oak to his left low down on its trunk. Closing his third eye, Elerian saw two great branches, their ends suddenly become like huge wooden hands with fingers for twigs, reach down and seize the changelings in midair even as they descended on him and Anthea. He could have reached out with a hand and touched their clawed, hand like paws when they were suddenly lifted high into the air, an enormous, bark covered hand wrapped around each of their chests. Agonized howls filled the air, accompanied by the snap and crack of breaking bones as the hands and fingers of the suddenly animated tree contracted and squeezed. Two heavy thumps followed when the mangled bodies of the licantropes, black blood running from every orifice, were cast heavily onto the ground near Elerian’s feet. With a rushing sound and a great shivering of its leaves, the oak straightened up and became just a tree again.
“Did you do that on purpose,” asked Anthea wonderingly in Elerian’s right ear.
“I have no idea what happened,” replied Elerian, who was as amazed and surprised as his companion at the sudden demise of the licantropes. After slowly sitting up, he took a sip from his silver flask of aqua vitae before passing it to Anthea who was, by now, sitting upright by his right side. “You are the most maddening creature that I have ever encountered,” observed Elerian in a half irritated half-admiring voice as Anthea also took a swallow of the restorative liquid in the flask. “One moment you are tormenting me and the next you risk your own life to save mine.”
“I am certain that Ascilius would suggest that we are exactly alike if you were to ask his opinion,” replied Anthea complacently as she leaned comfortably up against his right shoulder. “If you want a predictable wife, then you had best run away now.”
“It would be a simpler task to cut off my right arm than to give her up,” thought Elerian resignedly to himself. The feel of her up against him, soft and warm, with an underlying firmness that had its source in the long, steely muscles which covered her slender frame, was more precious to him than any treasure that he had discovered in all his travels.
“What now my lord and master?” asked Anthea dryly, her words rousing Elerian from the reverie into which he had fallen. “We cannot sit here forever however pleasant you may find it.”
“I suppose you are right,” replied Elerian, releasing her before rising reluctantly to his feet. Feeling somewhat revived by the aqua vitae, he pushed back the shaggy head of the nearest changeling with his right foot, revealing its iron collar. Drawing Acer from the creature’s skull, Elerian suddenly struck the collar with the edge of the knife. The lines of argentum traced on the blade briefly flared white as the thin circlet of iron split apart with a loud crack. Methodically Elerian did the same for the other three collars, retrieving Rasor when he approached the licantrope slain by that blade. His task accomplished, Elerian looked grimly at the silent black forms around him.
“But for Dymiter’s gift Anthea and I would be dead now,” he thought somberly to himself, wondering again at the purpose and nature of the armband that he wore. Warily, he approached the oak that had saved them. Laying his right hand against its rough bole, he briefly sent a little of his shade into the tree, the contact assuring him that the oak was only a tree and not one of the Ondredon. Only the power of his armband had animated it, a power which the talisman had drawn from the trees around him without any direction from him.
“We should be on our way back to the others, Elerian,” said Anthea, interrupting his thoughts. “Torquatus will know that his creatures have met their death and that they fell in this place because of the collars that they wore.”
Turning toward her, Elerian saw that she, too, had risen to her feet, an impatient look on her fair face. With a gleam of mischief in his gray eyes, Elerian suddenly flicked Rasor at her, hilt first, admiring the deft way in which she responded to his small challenge by casually catching the knife with her right hand. After bending lithely and slipping Rasor into her right boot top, Anthea cast an arch, confident look at his way with her dark eyes as if to dare him into another test of her skill and strength.
Instead of responding to her challenge, Elerian said quietly, “Follow me into the forest toward the water I hear running in the distance, Anthea. I have one more ruse to enact before we return to our companions.” Skilled in woodcraft and the art of the hunt, Anthea guessed Elerian’s intent at once, following him without question as he walked east through the trees. Light footed and silent as shadows, the bright-eyed pair advanced through the forest until they came to the stony bank of a small, fast flowing brook that ran southeast.
“With a bit of luck, Torquatus will think that we are fleeing toward Ancharia or the Abercius,” Elerian said quietly to Anthea as they removed their boots. After thrusting their footwear into their belts, they entered the cold water of the stream.
“This will do us no good if Torquatus sets more changelings on our trail,” said Anthea soberly as they waded downstream.
“Hopefully, he will not be able to enchant another pack in the same way,” replied Elerian, his voice pensive, as if he had already given the matter some thought. “I suspect now that he used something I left behind in Tyranus to bind them to me. More than likely it was my blood. I certainly left enough of that behind.”
Before Anthea could make any reply to his observation, Elerian suddenly leaped from the streambed, his sinewy muscles carrying him high up onto the wide trunk of a rough barked chestnut growing on his right. Anthea followed his example, her lithe leap achieving a similar height on the bole of the tree. Side by side they raced to the first limb, Anthea drawing herself onto it a hairsbreadth before Elerian.
“You lead!” she said with a knowing gleam of her eyes when they had drawn on their boots again. “I do not wish you to become distracted on the way back.”
“I cannot imagine what you are talking about,” replied Elerian innocently, but Anthea remained firmly in place until he set off through the treetops.
“This view is highly inferior to the one that I had before,” he thought to himself with a mental sigh as he ran lightly over the wide branches be
fore him, maintaining a moderate pace that he and Anthea could sustain for many hours. Traveling entirely through the canopy of the forest, they arrived, without incident, just before dawn at the clearing where they had left their companions. The rain began again as they descended from the trees and darted across the open space before them, keeping to the stonier parts of the clearing where they would leave the least scent. Passing without hesitation through the illusion which hid the tunnel entrance between the two oaks, they sped down the passageway, drops of rain gleaming on their dark hair and leather shirts under the rays of the small mage light that Elerian lit. Eagerly, Elerian opened the hidden door at the end of the tunnel, but there was no sign of their companions in the passageway behind it.
“I wish that they had waited here,” said Elerian worriedly to Anthea as he closed the hidden door behind him. “There is no telling what lies at the end of this tunnel.”
“Ascilius will keep them safe,” replied Anthea reassuringly as, side by side, they followed the passageway before them. Several hundred feet later, they emerged from the tunnel, finding themselves in a narrow cleft with stone walls that soared at least one hundred feet into the air on both sides of them. After traveling north perhaps an eighth of a mile, the cleft suddenly opened up. Through the light rain which was falling, Elerian and Anthea saw a long, narrow, wooded valley before them that was completely surrounded by lofty, gray cliffs whose sheer faces appeared not to offer the least hand or foothold. A clear mountain stream flowed through its center, ending in a pool at the base of the gray wall to their right. The pool evidently drained through some hidden outlet, for its level remained constant despite the continual influx of water from the stream.
“This place is like a fortress,” observed Anthea as she took in the high, bare peaks that rose up beyond the cliffs that hemmed in the valley. “There appears to be no other way in or out except through the tunnel behind us.”
“A fortress or a trap,” thought Elerian uneasily to himself as he searched, with his keen eyes, the turf covered, treeless slope before him. The dim light hindered him not at all, but if the company had passed this way, even the heavy tread of the Dwarves had left no sign in the springy grass covering the ground. Alert for any danger, Elerian walked down to the pool with Anthea by his side. In the longer grass growing on its bank, he was relieved to see the print of a Dwarf boot.
“They went upstream,” he said to Anthea who had stooped to cup a handful of clear water from the pool in her right hand. Before Elerian could stop her, she drank a draught. “Take care what you do,” he warned her. “The stream may be ensorcelled. I have seen such waters before.”
“It is exceedingly cold, but there is no charm on it,” scoffed Anthea before drinking her fill. When no harm overtook her, Elerian drank too, for the chase they had endured that night had wrung him dry.
“Let us follow the stream into the wood,” suggested Anthea. “Perhaps the others are sheltering there.” Taking her own suggestion, she began to follow the watercourse, walking so lightly through the fragrant herbs and long grass that grew on its banks that she left no sign of her passage. Following after her, Elerian found more signs that their heavier footed companions had passed this way. After covering a distance of several hundred feet, he and Anthea stepped beneath the first trees of the wood which appeared to be made up mainly of oaks and chestnuts. Ancient and huge, they supported a well-developed canopy of branches and green leaves.
Slipping silently through the trees, Elerian and Anthea followed the faint tracks their companions had left behind in the thick drifts of wet leaves that covered the forest floor. When they came to the lip of a slight depression ringed by mighty oaks, they found the company sitting in a circle in the middle of the hollow. Hanging near them from a low growing oak limb was a fat, spotted buck. Not far from the deer were heaps of fresh dug majum, bits of dark soil still clinging to their gray skinned, rounded sides as well as brown chestnuts freshly taken from their spiny husks, and bunches of purple grapes. Everyone sprang to their feet when Elerian and Anthea stepped out of the trees into the hollow, and questions flew through thick and fast, but Elerian insisted on having his own answered first.
“Why did you not wait in the passageway?” he asked Ascilius. “Who knows what lives in this valley?”
“That was my intent at first, but near dawn hunger forced us onto our feet. After we exited the cleft, we saw deer near the wood. When we followed them into the forest, Forian brought one of them down. After we dressed it out, we discovered this hollow and decided to wait here until you and Anthea returned. We have only just sat down, after foraging for the majum and the chestnuts that you see by the venison. We lack only some sheltered place now where we can risk a fire. The tunnel beneath the cliffs is too narrow to hold all of us comfortably.”
“Let me see what I can find then,” suggested Elerian to Ascilius.
“Search away but hurry!” replied the Dwarf. “Soon I will be hungry enough to eat yonder beast raw.”
As he left the hollow, Elerian was not surprised when Anthea followed him. Although he would have preferred that she rest after their ordeal, he made no objection, for she had proved her hardihood during the chase. As they progressed deeper into the damp wood, showers of gleaming raindrops pattering down on them in bursts from the leafy canopy overhead, Elerian opened his third eye from time to time, alert for more magic like the illusion guarding the cliff face between the two oak trees. His persistence was rewarded when he suddenly saw, between the tree trunks ahead of him, the golden gleam of an active spell in the distance.
“There is something magical there,” said Elerian quietly to Anthea as he pointed out the distant gleam with the index finger of his right hand.
“I see it,” replied Anthea excitedly after she opened her third eye. Walking quickly but warily, she and Elerian approached the light, eventually finding themselves standing before an enormous oak whose lower trunk was at least fifteen feet across. With their mage sight, they saw a man high disk of shimmering, swirling gold set at ground level in the green column that was the shade of the tree.
“This looks to the door of an elf home,” said Elerian, speaking first in a voice animated by excitement.
THE HAVEN
Drawing closer to the trunk of the oak, Elerian raised his right hand and spoke the same spell that had opened his parents’ dwelling in the Abercius. Closing his third eye after the golden sphere that sped from his fingers struck the magical door, he saw that an elliptical opening, four feet at its widest and perhaps seven feet high, had appeared in the wide bole of the tree. Through the opening Elerian saw a small landing that terminated at a set of steps that led down into the earth. A thick layer of dust covered both the stone floor of the hall and the stairs.
“This place has long been empty,” said Elerian in a disappointed voice to Anthea when he saw that the dust in the hall was undisturbed. “I had had hoped that Elves might still be living in it.”
“Let us make certain,” replied Anthea, lighting a small mage light which took up a position a foot above her dark locks. Exhibiting her usual fearlessness, she stepped through the opening onto the landing. Drawing Acer with his right hand, Elerian followed her inside and down the flight of steps. After passing through an unlocked wooden door at the base of the stairway, he and Anthea stepped into a great, circular room with stone walls, an arched ceiling, and a large fireplace inset into the wall on their right. On the far side of the room, a second set of steps led up to another wooden door. To their left, the wall was pierced by four more doorways. Well-crafted furniture filled the room, but like the hall and the stairs behind them, everything was covered with the dust of many years and there were extensive cobwebs in all the corners.
After passing, in turn, through each of the entryways on their left, Elerian and Anthea discovered a kitchen, a bathroom with running water, a storeroom that held only two empty wooden kegs, and a dozen bedrooms arranged along a hall. None of the rooms held anything other than f
urniture. The inhabitants of the dwelling had evidently taken everything else when they abandoned the structure.
Carrying the kegs they had found, for Elerian planned to fill them later, they returned to the great room. Setting aside the containers, they ascended the second set of stairs. At the far end of the landing they found at the top of the stairway, they were confronted by a second magical door. When Elerian opened it with the same charm that had unlocked the first door, he and Anthea found themselves at the margin of a circular, turf covered glade with a small brook running through it. Leaden clouds, from which a fine, persistent rain was falling, covered the patch of sky framed by the branches of the trees that encircled the small meadow.
“How can this be, Elerian?” asked Anthea over his right shoulder in a puzzled voice. “We have traveled many feet, but we appear to be looking out the far side of the same oak tree that held the entryway in its side.”
“The Elves had magic that altered space and distance,” replied Elerian, harkening back to the tree dwelling that he and Ascilius had discovered in the Broken Lands. “I hope someday to unravel the secrets of the charms that they used,” he continued absently, most of his attention focused on the glade and any secrets that it might contain, but his visual exploration of the meadow revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
