The Book from Baden Dark

by James Moloney

  He would know only when they uncovered more of this dark land’s secrets.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Last Cavern

  MARCEL LED THE WAY across the third cavern, its floor rutted by the claw marks of Mortregis. The beast had certainly been here then. Illusion come to life. His eyes stared warily ahead, darting occasionally upwards, to the left, to the right, looking for … what? The unexpected? What was he expecting?

  He didn’t need to check behind him to know that Bea and Fergus followed in his trail, walking side by side. He wished he was alone and at the same time gave thanks that he wasn’t. Perhaps in that confusion he was admitting to himself what he’d been careful to hide from the pair of them: that for all his bravado and magic, he was afraid.

  ‘Marcel, something’s watching us,’ Bea called ahead to him.

  He slowed to let the others catch up. The rift between them couldn’t be allowed to make them vulnerable. Fergus’s sword was already in his hand.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t left my bow back on that ledge. I feel helpless,’ said Bea. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not very big.’

  ‘Neither’s Termagant,’ Marcel commented, and now they all shivered.

  ‘Goblins, do you think?’ said Fergus.

  ‘I’ve never seen one. Do they even exist?’ Bea asked doubtfully.

  ‘If they do, Baden Dark would be the place,’ said Marcel.

  Whatever the danger, Fergus thought like a soldier. ‘If we keep going, this unseen thing will be behind us. We’d be trapped.’

  ‘I saw it again,’ Bea interrupted. ‘A different place this time. There might be more than one.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll attack?’

  They were all giving voice to their fears, each feeding on the terrors of the last.

  ‘Not knowing what they are is the biggest worry,’ said Marcel.

  ‘This whole place worries me,’ Fergus muttered, his honesty speaking for them all.

  Marcel doused the light made by his magic. ‘No point making it easy for them. If they want to hurt us, they’ll have to find us first.’

  It sounded like a fine idea, but the sudden darkness simply doubled their distress.

  ‘Marcel, can you make this glow,’ said Bea, pressing a small rock into his palm.

  It was a simple trick, one he’d used when searching for Suskin. As soon as the magic began to brighten their faces, Bea took the rock back and, after weighing it briefly in her hand, hurled it as hard as she could into the darkness. The stone looped downwards, shedding light onto a series of boulders, and in that instant Marcel caught a glimpse of two large eyes in a head that seemed too small for them.

  ‘I saw it,’ he cried.

  ‘So did I,’ said Bea in a calmer voice. ‘It’s a Squirrel Man.’

  ‘They’re not so dangerous, are they?’ Fergus asked.

  Bea touched the base of her thumb. ‘You’d be surprised. But they’re not exactly Termagant when the magic has hold of her.’

  ‘What are you doing with the light, Marcel?’ Fergus wanted to know. He’d turned to face the way they’d been going, and when Marcel did the same he discovered a faint golden tinge in the distance.

  ‘Nothing, it’s not my magic.’

  All three stared silently at the light. It seemed to draw them towards it. ‘Do you think the Squirrel Men are the harbingers of something more dangerous?’ said Fergus.

  They were back to frightening themselves with their own imaginations. Bea had shown them the best way to get over that.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ she said.

  As they went nearer, the cavern narrowed until it seemed its sides were veering in towards them. Whatever was beyond couldn’t be seen until they’d passed between some boulders that had fallen into this opening; boulders so close together in places they had to walk in single file.

  ‘Just the spot to attack intruders,’ said Fergus, drawing his sword again.

  The Squirrel Men seemed to have disappeared. Was that a good sign or bad? Then they were through into the new cavern and all fears of attack were brushed aside by the scene that confronted them.

  ‘As bright as day,’ said Bea, and Marcel was surprised by the welcome in her voice. Elves didn’t like this kind of light, not usually anyway.

  ‘Almost,’ he muttered.

  Above them wasn’t a sky. How could it be when they were so far underground. The light simply petered out, leaving a dome of darkness above to remind them where they were. To the right and left a short distance ahead lay woodlands, with trees rising thirty feet into the air, no different from any they would encounter in the high country or down on the plains of Elster.

  The light and these twin woods were remarkable enough, but their eyes were drawn irresistibly to one shape that dominated the entire landscape before them: a single tree. To call it huge wasn’t enough. There was no single word in the tongues of human or elf alike to describe it. The trunk would take ten minutes to walk around, and only then if it extended neatly into the ground so they could try it. But at the base of this tree was a gargantuan system of roots, spread out to hold it upright perhaps, or to spread its weight. Each of the many radiating roots would reach well over the head of the tallest man. Growing over these, out of them, around them, twisting back on themselves and then disappearing into the earth, were hundreds of root tendrils; although regular words were again misleading because each was the thickness of a forest oak. From where Marcel and his companions stood, the base of the tree looked as though it had been wound together in a mad frenzy by some giant basketweaver.

  Bea raised her arm, pointing. ‘Squirrel Men. Eight, nine, a dozen of them at least. Look, they’re inside the tree as well.’

  ‘And on the trunk higher up,’ said Fergus.

  Marcel followed his cousin’s eye and picked out the little shapes scurrying across the bark and along the massive branches. They seemed very busy, though not too busy to stop and exchange a few words of greeting whenever two met high above the ground. He watched as one disappeared into a knothole and another emerged through a different opening close by.

  ‘Inside the tree must be like a honeycomb,’ said Bea, who was watching the same comings and goings.

  ‘It’s certainly old enough to be hollowed out inside,’ Fergus said.

  ‘Ancient,’ Marcel agreed in a whisper. He was examining the gnarled and twisted branches that spread from the trunk. Like the roots below, these branches wound around on themselves, turning one way, then the other, dividing and spreading out. Each by itself was larger than entire trees in the Mortal Kingdoms. Part of these branches extended all the way to the ground as a way of holding up their immense weight, but other twisted limbs rose higher, so high they disappeared into the gloom beyond the pale yellow light.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Bea asked when Marcel lifted his hand towards his face. He passed the palm in front of his nose and then he didn’t have to give an answer in words. Above them, the darkness receded. The magic was tiring, but he was intrigued to know how high the branches extended and this spell was the only way to find out.

  ‘Fantastic,’ Bea sighed.

  ‘It goes on forever,’ said Fergus.

  But the tree and its huge branches didn’t stretch upwards forever. Just as it seemed Marcel’s sorcery would create an underground sky, the top of the tree vanished into a new void of darkness.

  ‘It’s the leaves, making a canopy over the rest,’ Bea suggested and since she knew forests and their lordly giants better than he did, Marcel accepted this explanation. It was Fergus who saw otherwise.

  ‘No, it’s not the darkness of leaves. Those branches are digging into some kind of ceiling.’

  Marcel increased the intensity of his magic. He couldn’t do it for long, but he had to know. As the light flared briefly, he saw enough to realise Fergus was right.

  ‘That’s as far as the cavern goes,’ said Bea. ‘It’s solid rock, yet the branches have burrowed into it. They’re like roots in reverse. How high do
they grow after that, do you think?’

  ‘All the way into the earth above,’ said Marcel. ‘Into the soil beneath the Mortal Kingdoms.’

  The other two stared at him when he said this, responding to something ominous in his voice.

  ‘The old legends, the stories the sages tell in Noam, they’re true,’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Driving up through the rock, into the earth and spreading through the Mortal Kingdoms. If evil needs a way to feed its poison into the lives of ordinary men and women, then this is exactly how it would do it. I was right about Baden Dark. This is what I came to find,’ he murmured. ‘This tree is what I have to destroy.’

  He couldn’t sustain the light any longer without weakening himself badly, and there was no need anyway, for he’d seen enough to be sure. Using only the illumination that already existed, whatever its source, he began to explore the strangely verdant fields between the woods on either side, every step taking him deeper into the cavern whose wonders, at first so amazing, had become purely sinister.

  Fergus and Bea followed, stopping as he did on a small rise in the middle of the grassy expanse, then climbing down to the banks of a shallow stream that lay between them and the first of the tree’s massive roots.

  There Marcel paused.

  ‘What’s the matter? Can you sense something?’ Fergus asked.

  ‘This light. It can only be conjured by a sorcerer’s will.’ What he didn’t say was that he felt that will close by, a power every bit as strong as his own, a power that daunted him. If all of the evil that afflicted the Mortal Kingdoms had a single source, then it would need a power like this; and for all he knew, he was detecting only the smallest portion of it. He shuddered, even before Bea called to him in an unmistakable tone of warning.

  ‘Marcel. There, among the giant roots.’

  He followed her gaze across the stream and quickly saw what held her eyes so intently. On the far bank, beneath an arch formed by the tree’s gnarled and twisted roots, a figure stood observing them. Not a dragon, not a ghost, but a human being in clothes not so different from their own, apart from the symbols of sorcery embroidered once on the sleeve of his shirt and once over one knee of his trousers. If he’d been shorter and a little stocky, Marcel might have mistaken him for Rhys Tironel who also dispensed with elaborate robes despite his grand position. The man’s hair was both brown and grey, his beard barely reaching to his chest. If there was one feature that stood out, that made him seem older than he appeared, it was his grey eyes that sat deeply in their sockets, giving him a weary air.

  They were all too surprised to call a greeting; besides, what would you say to a man you met in such a place?

  ‘I have been waiting for you,’ the wizard called to them at last.

  ‘Who is he?’ Fergus whispered.

  ‘How could I possibly know?’ hissed Marcel in reply.

  Of all the monsters he’d expected to encounter in Baden Dark, he hadn’t imagined a man with a voice not much different from his father’s. He remained wary of more tricks, as though this wizard called to them just another illusion no different from Mortregis and the fearsome magic he’d detected was using it to hide a far less welcoming face.

  ‘He says he’s been waiting for us,’ he added.

  Bea responded quickly. ‘He must know about the dragon then.’

  ‘Of course he does. He sent it against us,’ said Fergus.

  It was all too much for Marcel. He had to think and their voices were distracting him. There was so much he wasn’t prepared for and every moment he hesitated, evil was settling him into its sights. How long before it suspected his purpose and struck first?

  ‘Bea, I have to get away from here, I have to plan what I’m going to do,’ he said softly and, before he quite knew what spell he was conjuring, his lips moved again. ‘Head and shoulders, chest and thigh, fade to shadow …’ and at the same time his hand passed before his face.

  ‘Marcel!’ he heard Bea cry out. ‘Fergus, what’s happened to him? I can’t see him anywhere.’

  She called again, then a shout came from Fergus, but by then Marcel, invisible, had hurried to the nearer of the two woods. Then he was among the shadows, alone at last, with the sinister tree towering over him and his mind filled with images of the way it penetrated the rock, extending, he was sure, into the very soil of the Mortal Kingdoms.

  CHAPTER 21

  Gannimere

  BEA HAD NO IDEA what Marcel was about to do when he whispered his fears to her. Fergus was taken even more by surprise.

  ‘What have you done to him?’ he shouted to the wizard across the water. Just as quickly, his sword was in his hand.

  Not for long, though. He gave another cry, one of pain this time, and the weapon clattered uselessly onto the stony banks of the stream, leaving Fergus clutching at his wrist.

  ‘The handle was so hot I couldn’t hold it,’ he gasped.

  Bea took his hand, opening it gently to inspect the damage. ‘It’s not a serious burn,’ she said, wincing at the pink and tender skin. ‘The wizard didn’t like you pulling your sword on him like that.’

  ‘I thought he’d done something to Marcel.’

  ‘So did I. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it wasn’t his magic.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ called the wizard. ‘Your young friend is a sorcerer then. I sensed as much, but why has he vanished like this?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t trust anyone he doesn’t know, not in a place like Baden Dark,’ said Fergus, whose tone made it plain he felt the same way.

  ‘Then he should know my name,’ the wizard said, and, raising his voice a little, perhaps because he hoped Marcel was still nearby, he announced, ‘Gannimere.’ He gave a little bow. ‘What is the young sorcerer’s name?’

  ‘Marcel,’ Bea told him, since there didn’t seem any reason not to.

  ‘Marcel,’ the man repeated softly, letting the word play over his tongue like the first warm drink on a cold day.

  It was difficult to know what he thought of it, because his eyes were sunk so deep beneath their brows and eyelids. His face didn’t make sense in a way, because the flesh was that of a man in his middle years, yet those eyes seemed as old as the gnarled tree towering above them. Bea waited for Gannimere to ask for their names too, but he seemed uninterested. Anger flared, part of something more uncomfortable that had hold of her, even if she wasn’t sure what it was.

  ‘My name is Beatrice, although everyone calls me Bea,’ she announced pointedly. ‘And this is Marcel’s cousin, Fergus.’

  ‘Ah, do forgive me,’ Gannimere said with surprising grace. ‘Now that we have shared names, I hope your suspicions are allayed.’

  ‘There was a dragon,’ said Fergus. ‘You know there was. You sent it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, the dragon was conjured by my magic, and your own imaginations, as you surely discovered.’

  ‘It might have killed us.’

  ‘Or frightened you off, more likely. In either case, you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘And the ghosts?’

  ‘It’s quite natural to find them in Baden Dark, as you’ll see. Those who came to meet you are still troubled by their deaths. If they could, they would steal your bodies,’ he said with a smile that expected them to cringe, as they certainly did. ‘Ah, but don’t be afraid. They have no magic in them and, as you have already discovered, I’m sure, they can’t hurt you. Each will accept its fate sooner or later, but I didn’t send them against you. No one among the living can command the dead.’

  ‘Are you alive, or just another ghost?’ Fergus wanted to know.

  Bea watched as Gannimere turned his oddly tired eyes on them both in a way he hadn’t bothered to until now, as though the question meant more to him than the rest of the things they’d said. ‘Oh yes, I’m alive. Very much alive.’

  ‘Why don’t the ghosts haunt you?’

  ‘Because they know me and they know my purpose here.’

&nbs
p; ‘And what is that?’ said Fergus.

  ‘I would tell you more if Marcel was with you.’

  ‘You could tell us about this tree, at least.’

  ‘A tree! Is that all it seems to you? Arminsel is the most powerful thing your eyes will ever see and, because of that, the most dangerous.’

  As he spoke, Gannimere looked towards the wood that lay to their right, a little closer than the trees on the lower side of the gentle slope.

  ‘Your friend has gone to hide among the undergrowth in there,’ he said with a certainty that surprised Bea. How could he know when Marcel had vanished the way he did?

  ‘Go to him, call him closer and tell him that I am anxious to meet him. He has nothing to fear from me.’

  ‘You’ve asked us to believe you. That’s the first trick of an evil man,’ said Bea, unafraid of how the wizard would take this challenge. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to deceive Marcel. He trusted a man named Starkey once, thought he was the bravest knight he’d ever known.’

  ‘And another named Damon,’ breathed Fergus, remembering the man who had betrayed him more cruelly than the rest.

  Hearing these names, Bea shuddered and slipped her hand inside the neck of her dull dress where, thanks to those two, a scar blemished the smooth skin of her shoulder.

  ‘Will you do as I ask?’ the wizard said. ‘Will you bring Marcel to me?’

  ‘Do we trust him?’ Bea whispered, not entirely sure that the wizard’s magic didn’t carry her words to his ears anyway.

  Fergus blew out a sharp breath through his nose as a sign of his confusion. ‘I don’t think he’s the messenger of evil that Marcel wants to believe. What do you think? Is Marcel right? Are we the fools?’

  ‘Marcel might be able to pick out magic, but he’s no better than you and me when it comes to what’s good and what’s evil.’

  Fergus gave a half-laugh. ‘That’s just how I feel about it. If I could find my cousin right now, I’d pull him down from that high-and-mighty place he’s made for himself and slam him up against a wall.’

  Bea would like to see him do it, then felt ashamed of herself and kept the thought from Fergus.