by Des Pensable
Ironwood was undecided. Someone had certainly stolen Moonbeam’s memory and her name. Anyone that would do that would think nothing of implanting a false memory. If this creature was telling the truth then they had also stolen her spirit from her real body and presumably placed it in another body that was already damaged. Perhaps this creature was actually telling the truth.
‘Tell me more about this Miranda you seek.’ said Ironwood.
Miranda is a beautiful druid princess about 20 years old. Her mother is Snowbelle the nymph Queen of Argenta. She doesn’t know who her father is. Her real body lies sleeping in the Elendari Lord Darkmantle’s estate on Moonmist.’
‘I remember the name Snowbelle. I think she is my mother.’ said Moonbeam a little unsure.
A bat flew nearby attracting Ironwood’s attention.
‘How did they get here?’
‘Unfortunately when I passed your barrier they managed to sneak through. Once inside they began eating the butterflies and growing. When they reach a certain size they split into two and continue on. I think they belong to our enemy. I am concerned what they will do when they run out of butterflies.’
More bats began flying around them. Hundreds were visible in the sky around them all chasing fewer and fewer butterflies. Suddenly one swooped down attacking Miranda. Ironwood swatted it with his staff and it burst into a small cloud of dark mist and evaporated.
Ironwood was still unsure and not prepared to release Aquitain. He walked closer to Aquitain calling Moonbeam to stay close to him then waved his staff in the air and vines began sprouting out of the ground in a circle about ten paces across around the three of them. They grew about three times as high as Aquitain and then grew inward forming a dome shaped structure around them like a birdcage. On the outside of the vine cage grew long sharp thorns and curious red flowers that looked like animal faces with open jaws and sharp teeth.
Bats started flying down around the vine cage and some landed trying to get through the vines. The animal face flowers bit into them and they exploded into vapour. Soon there were hundreds of bats clambering all over the vine cage struggling to get through. The animal face flowers had no chance of stopping the huge mass of squirming bat bodies, so Ironwood made it thicker with more spikes. Suddenly the bats all took off as if they had given up trying to break through.
Ironwood walked over and looked through a gap in the vines and suddenly jumped back as they began to catch fire.
‘What’s happening?’ shouted Aquitain.
‘The bats have formed into large black boars with flaming red eyes. The gaze from their eyes is burning my vines.’ said Ironwood.
‘Make it rain.’ said Aquitain.
Ironwood nodded and heavy rain fell all over the vine cage dampening out the fire but it had substantially weakened the structure of the cage. One of the dark malevolent creatures charged at the weakened area of the cage partly breaking through. Ironwood beat at it with his staff. Another attacked the cage from the other side and another two from other parts of the cage.
‘Release me’. pleaded Aquitain. ‘You can’t fight all these creatures yourself.’
Reluctantly Ironwood agreed and the vines holding Aquitain withered and fell to dust. Moonbeam squealed and hid behind Ironwood who was trying to stop one of the creatures that looked like large boars from breaking through a widening hole in the cage. Aquitain reached his hand out to little Moonbeam and said.
‘Please trust me Miranda. I won’t harm you. I’m here to save you. Hand me the flower.’
She tossed him the flower and he picked it up and mentally reshaped it into a sparkling silver sword and ran over to the side opposite Ironwood and began stabbing at the creature trying to break in. The creature screamed in pain and stopped attacking. He then attacked another with the same result. Unfortunately as soon as he moved to another part of the cage to stop one the others would restart attacking the cage again. Aquitain knew they were fighting a losing battle. Maybe he could get her out of here to his own dream then he could really fight.
He moved over to Moonbeam and squatted down beside her.
‘Miranda you must trust me. We may not be able to win here. They may eventually overrun us. You must climb on my back and if necessary we will run to my world where I can fight my way.’
‘You gave me the flower. I will trust you.’ she said with tears in her eyes and climbed on his broad rocky shoulders clinging tightly around his neck with her little arms and legs. Just as he stood up to his full size one of the large beasts broke through into the vine cage. It ran straight at him but he stopped it dead in its tracks as he skewered it with his sword. It slid off his blade forming a black blob of quivering jelly that fragmented into dozens of smaller bits, which reformed into black rats.
‘By the Lady these damn things are persistent.’ he said as a hoard of rats began to pour through other holes in the cage as well. They swarmed right over Ironwood totally ignoring him. They wanted to get at Miranda.
Aquitain stomped around kicking, squashing and smashing rats but still they came jumping at him trying to climb up his body to get at Miranda. She screamed as one made it, biting into her leg. She bashed at it with one hand knocking it off. The situation was getting desperate, then Aquitain had an idea.
‘Rat Catcher to me.’ he yelled and it appeared.
‘Destroy these rats!’
‘As you wish.’ said the Rat Catcher charging into the fray biting and slashing with its claws. Each time it hit or bit a rat, the thing evaporated into a small cloud of vapour. It ran faster and faster until it was almost a blur. Soon the onslaught of the rats wavered and stopped. In another minute it was all over; the rats were gone.
The cat slowed down to a walking pace, moved to the centre of the cage, sat down and began licking its paws. Aquitain lowered Miranda to the ground and she ran over and patted the cat.
‘What is your name cat?’ she said.
‘I am Rat Catcher.’ it replied.
‘Thank you Rat Catcher.’ then she looked around at Aquitain.
‘Thank you Aquitain, I’m sorry I called you a big monster. You can stay and play if you like.’
‘No. The Rat Catcher and I’ll have to get back to my dream. I’ll find you and take you back to your real body as soon as I can. The question is how to find you.’
‘Thanks for looking after her Ironwood. You had better not stay here for too much longer as I suspect whoever was after her will probably try to find her current body. She’ll need to quickly wake up and hide. Can you hide her somewhere?’
‘That might be difficult.’ said Ironwood.
‘You see in the real world I am a tree. I am lending her strength to heal herself but how long it will take I don’t know and once back I cannot communicate with her and advise her to hide.’
Suddenly Rat Catcher interrupted
‘Quickly, Lord Warden you must wake up. There is trouble at Darkmantle’s estate.’
‘You’re the Warden of Moonmist.’ said Ironwood sounding quite surprised.
‘Yes.’ said Aquitain.
‘Better keep quiet about the fact I was here. I seem to be upsetting everyone’s plans lately.’
‘Yes My Lord.’ said Ironwood with a smile. ‘I’ll tell no one.’
Aquitain thought for a few moments then said
‘I have an idea which might work. I have a piece of my dream world here.’ and he reformed the mind clay sword back into a ball in his hand.
‘Can you please lend me a twig from your body? I might be able to give you a way to communicate with Miranda when she wakes up.’
‘If it will help, Lord Warden take this.’ and he turned one of his fingers into a wooden twig and snapped it off and handed it to Aquitain.
Aquitain took the twig and poked it into the mind clay. He then remoulded the mind clay into the shape of a beautiful wooden doll that looked very much like the real Miranda and said to Moonbeam.
‘I’ve made you a little present that you can take ho
me from this dream world but it needs a heart to be alive in your real world so that it can talk to you. Can you form your little finger into a little heart and give it to me.’
‘Will it run around and play with me and Ironwood too.’ asked Moonbeam.
‘I’m sure it will if you ask it to.’ said Aquitain.
‘Then I’ll make it a heart.’ she said and formed her little finger into a heart and snapped off her hand and passed it to Aquitain who made a small hole in the dolls chest and placed the heart there. He then formed his little finger into a brain snapped it off and embedded it into the head of the doll.
‘What shall we call your dolly Moonbeam?’
‘I shall name it Tigerlilly!’ said Moonbeam.
‘That’s a nice name.’ said Aquitain he then concentrated on the doll.
‘Hello. My name is Aquitain. You are a part of me and Moonbeam and Ironwood. You are a construct. Your name is Tigerlilly. You will always keep your wooden body alive and safe. You will watch and listen. You will communicate with us by mindspeak. From now on you will only receive commands from Moonbeam.’
He spoke a series of words in high Draconic and the doll stood up in Aquitain’s hand and said
‘Hello my name is Tigerlilly.’
Moments later there was a crash of thunder and a large grey cloud appeared overhead that covered to sky from horizon to horizon.
‘I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN!’ said a thunderous masculine voice.
Immediately, a rainbow coloured dome appeared over the top of them protecting them from the great arcs of lighting that struck at them from the cloud.
‘HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE! ’ said a feminine voice charged with immense power and the cloud dissipated and the sun shone once more.
‘Umm. I think I’ve trod on someone’s toes.’ said Aquitain as he handed Tigerlilly to Moonbeam.
‘Ironwood give me two minutes to leave your dream then wake up. Come on Rat Catcher lets go home.’ and they ran back towards Aquitain’s dream.
A thin beam of light shone down from the sky and lit up Tigerlilly’s face and the breeze murmured ‘Welcome to life, little one.’
Chapter 7 Granddad’s Problem
Granddad sat down across the table from the rest of the family. Thanks for all coming. We have a serious problem. This afternoon I received a summons to come to a special meeting of the Unity of Wisdom Council tomorrow. It seems that they are going to review our license to make and sell ‘official’ magic items.
I have also been asked by the Chairman of the Wizard’s Guild to attend a special meeting tomorrow to discuss a serious problem. Now this is very worrying since I’m the Secretary of the Guild and normally it is my job to notify the other committee members. They don’t know what’s happening either. Fortunately one of my friends tipped me off yesterday that something serious was brewing.
‘Good Heavens.’ said Melanie’s father Peter.
‘What’s going on? Why now? What have we done? They haven’t discovered that we’ve been trading with the Yith have they. I knew that would get us into trouble sooner or later.’
‘Quiet Peter we all knew the risks about that. Let’s hear what Dad has to say.’ said Melanie’s mother.
‘No. Curiously enough I don’t think that’s the problem. I’ve got a bad feeling that it might have something to do with Rob. I haven’t heard from him, Alpha or Melanie for a few weeks now. You remember we got a report that he was killed and turned into a bear. Well my contact on Mudrun sent me a message a few days ago saying that he died again and was reincarnated as some rare type of spider.’
‘Sounds typical.’ said Peter. ‘He should have known better than to trust one of those druids.’
‘Anyway he told my contact that he was heading into some exotic world chasing a young woman he liked.’ said Granddad.
‘Why couldn’t he just come home?’ said Aquitain’s mother.
‘We could have arranged a wish to fix all his problems.’
‘True Tina but it seems he’s become much more independent since he’s been away.’
‘Is she a spider too?’ said Peter laughing. ‘It’ll be hard to employ them in the shop when they get back. I don’t think our customers will like being served by spiders.’
‘Don’t be silly Peter.’ said Melanie’s mother.
‘We could polymorph them before they worked in the shop.’
‘Yes we could polymorph them into insect people? That would be hysterical wouldn’t it? Insects by day and spiders by night.’
‘Be serious Peter.’ said Granddad getting a little annoyed.
‘This is not a time for jokes. I contacted a good friend of mine who is very good at getting all sorts of confidential information. He arrived in our world late yesterday and has been checking out his sources within the city since then. He should be arriving any time now.’
They continued the discussion for several more minutes until there was a knock on the planning room door and the head guard stated that the visitor had arrived.
‘Good, send him in will you.’ said Granddad and in flew a Traveller bug, which resembled a large brown cockroach about three finger widths long. He landed on the table and using mindspeak cheerily said.
‘Hi everyone! Nice to see that you are all healthy and happy, unfortunately, I’m the bearer of some bad news.’
‘Hi Helix.’ said everyone.
‘You should be glad Rob’s not here. He’s been turned into a spider.’ chuckled Peter.
‘I heard about that from Granddad.’ said Helix.
‘I’m sure he’d make a fine spider. With his mental powers he’d have no trouble charming poor little customers into his mercantile web.’
Everyone laughed. It was always good to see this happy little fellow and they knew they’d hear the bad news soon enough.
‘Quiet everyone.’ said Granddad suddenly becoming serious again. ‘What have you found out for us Helix?’
‘Well you’ve no doubt received the summons to the Unity of Wisdom Council and the Mages’ Guild this afternoon. I couldn’t find out anything about the Mages’ meeting but I did overhear a couple of conversations about the meeting in some of the temples.’
‘At least three High priests in three different temples have dreamed that Rob has upset their respective Gods. They are going to demand that Granddad drags him before them and apologizes profusely. They are also going to demand a large monetary reparation from all of you. In default you will have your merchant licenses revoked and all of you may be thrown in prison, exiled or worse.’
‘You’re joking.’ said Tina quite horrified.
‘What could Rob possibly have done to provoke that sort of response?’
‘I’m not sure but it’s somehow tied up with something called the Mentarin Treaty.’ said Helix. ‘It was mentioned several times.’
‘Oh. No!’ said Granddad. ‘This is serious indeed.’
‘What’s this treaty all about Dad?’ asked Tina.
‘It’s a secret trade treaty that has been in effect for a hundred years, however, in light of the seriousness of this situation and the fact that the Unity of Wisdom Council seems likely to overreact, it’s time you knew about it.’
‘We all know that Panmagica always promotes itself as the premier city of knowledge in the known universe. However, we also know that the fame of our city-state is more widely known for its magic shops. People come from everywhere to buy magic items and train to use magic. What is kept very quiet from most of its visitors is that probably three quarters of all magic items sold here are not made here. They’re made at a place called Mentar.’
‘It seems that the Mentarin people can produce magic items at less than half the cost that we can make them. Hence all the major magic items such as fountains, statues, constructs and the like are made by them and resold by us. From what I can determine, the Mentarin also make most of the healing potions sold by the temples these days. All Mentarin items sold are highly taxed by the Temples, and this h
as been the main source of their income.’
‘The Treaty of Mentarin was set up about a hundred years ago. It sets up the trade rules between the Mentarin and Panmagica. It strictly specifies that the Mentarin wish absolute secrecy in all dealings. They also wish to have absolute privacy. In other words nobody alive has ever visited them as far as I am aware. We don’t know exactly who they are or even where they live.’
‘In short the Treaty has been the mainstay of the Panmagican economy and Unity of Wisdom power for decades and anything that would jeopardize that treaty would be dealt with extremely severely by our illustrious leaders. It seems Rob must have accidentally upset the Mentarin in some way or perhaps even discovered their location and they have traced him back to us.’
‘What surprises me is why they have given me notice to come to the meeting rather than just sending the guard to drag me before them. Perhaps they’re not sure that it was Rob. Perhaps they are giving us advance warning to see if we make a run for it. Perhaps they want to get me out in the open, as they know that we’d put up a fight if they tried to get us out of here. I’m not sure.’
‘Could you arrange a visit to one of the Temple hierarchy for a little mind reading session.’ asked Peter.
‘That might not be a good idea on this occasion.’ replied Helix.
‘I’ve already tried that and most have taken unusual precautions to ward themselves almost as if they knew that you might try that.’
There was a knock on the door.
‘Excuse me Lord Theolaur, Arch Wizard Firestorm and High Priest Kelnor among others are at the front gate requesting your immediate presence. They also have a large number of the City Guard with them.’ said the Head Guard from outside the door.
Granddad immediately waved his hand over a crystal ball sitting in the middle of the planning room table and as it glowed into life all the family leaned forward to get a closer view. There were at least a hundred guards, two Wizards and High Priest Kelnor. Granddad then changed the view to his magic shop. A dozen city guards directed by one or two Wizards were breaking into the shop. The view at Peter’s magic shop was the same.
