The Book of Wind:

by E. E. Blackwood

  “You! Get out of the middle of the road!”

  Regina slowly reopened her eyes to the shrill command.

  The lead rider, marked by the flowing navy blue cape around her shoulders, wound her gauntleted paw around her dark-haired pony’s reins and pulled hard. With a shriek, the small but fearsome steed came to a sudden stop before Regina, reared up on its hind legs, slashing at the air with its front hooves. The remainder of the cavalry came up behind their leader, slowing their brown and beige ponies with gentler finesse.

  Regina gazed helplessly up at the riders. There were six of them in total, all clad in emerald armour overtop black chainmail. Their features were covered by steel helmets, all fastened with terrifying tusked and horned visors that only left their muzzles fully exposed.

  These were Alliance peace officers.

  “Dwain…” Regina found the energy to push up to a weary stand. She leaned a heavy shoulder into his walking staff. Her eyes and nose searched the soldiers’ metal faces for her hedgehog, but none of these riders bore any resemblance – there was just deep darkness from behind narrow rectangular eye slits.

  “She’s not dead.” The lead rider breathed a sigh of relief. A long-forgotten smell permeated into Regina’s nostrils over the scents of steel and pony dander. It was then she fully realized the white-haired muzzle nestled beneath the lead rider’s visor.

  Regina went rigid with fright. “…You’re a … you’re a…”

  A canine.

  “Of course she isn’t dead.” An otter flanking the canine rider’s right brewed a slow sneer across his lips.

  The other riders cowered in their saddles. “Phew, she reeks!” said one, while they wavered their gauntlets before their damp noses.

  “That’s fear she reeks of,” said the canine. “Haven’t you ever met a skunk before? Something’s terrified the poor thing.” She passed along her reins to the otter and dismounted her pony with a heavy thud. She came towards Regina, who slowly began to back away with her tail raised. “Was harm brought to you today? A skunk your age should take better care than to wander these woods alone.”

  “No … it’s impossible,” Regina breathed. “Get away. Get away from me!”

  The canine faltered, her paw extended towards Regina. “Madam, we’re here to help. I am – I am Junior Lieutenant Sara Uriost, under the banner of—”

  “Skunk! What are you doing laying there in the middle of the path?” shouted one of the three riders at the rear of the cavalry, a badger. “If you’re fine, be on your way! You are impeding official Alliance business!”

  The otter agreed. “This is your final warning. Remove yourself from the vicinity, lest we arrest you for vagrancy!”

  Regina shivered. “I…”

  “She’s in need!” Lieutenant Uriost said to the others, baffled.

  “Uriost, we cannot waste time,” said a feline soldier.

  “Your foolishness will get us killed.” said the otter. “Sergeant Aruto’s commands were—”

  “Sergeant Aruto is not here! Need I remind you, I am the commanding officer of this unit!” Uriost barked.

  “Uriost, it could be a trap!!” cried a rabbit from the rear. “This is exactly what we were warned against!”

  A mongoose on the other side of Uriost’s mount agreed. “Time is of the essence. Slay the skunk and let’s be on our way. Be quick about it too – I don’t want my armour ruined by her stench…”

  “…Slay?” Regina’s eyes widened with fear. “Wait! No!”

  Without any provocation, the otter dismounted his steed, drew a broadsword from the scabbard at his hip as he strode towards Regina. “Forget this madness – I’ll do it, myself.”

  Uriost grabbed the otter by the forearm. “Barrett, if you enjoy your rank, I suggest it is you who forgets the madness you’re about to—”

  “Oh, sod off.” The otter shouldered past her with a heavy shove and continued onward, leaving Uriost in paralyzed disbelief. He grabbed Regina by the shoulder and forced her to her knees. “Close your eyes, if you wish. Or not. I don’t really know the execution rites here in Galheist. Makes no difference to me.”

  “No…” Regina tried to squirm out of the otter’s gasp, but he was much too strong. Astral’s face came to mind, gentle and wrinkled by time’s endless touch. “No, please – please, I—”

  The mongoose called out. “Oi, what’s that beside her, Barrett?”

  The otter blinked and looked to the ground. Regina opened one eye and found her papa’s ruined map half-folded, floating in some mud.

  “What do we have here then?” Barrett left Regina be and picked the map up for study.

  “Please,” Regina begged him. “Please give it back … it was my papa’s … it’s the only thing I have…”

  “Blazing whiskers,” Barrett whispered. He swung around on a full heel and grabbed Regina by the arm, dragging her up to her feet again.

  “Barrett, what is it?” Uriost asked.

  “It’s a map to the Stone Zephyr,” he said. “It is a trap!”

  Uriost drew forward on quick boots to retrieve the sheet of parchment for herself. Steel eyes of wolfen darkness studied the map. “This proves nothing.”

  “Open your damn eyes, Lieutenant.” Barrett grabbed Regina by the back of the head and put his sword to her throat.

  “Barrett, stand down!” Uriost commanded.

  “No!” Regina sobbed. “Please, I don’t—”

  A new voice sounded from beyond: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but … according to the Vidian Civil Peace Treaty … is killing an innocent not forbidden in these lands?”

  “Who the hell…?” Barrett looked up, lowering his sword. With his guard down, Regina struggled to see another mammal coming towards them along the path.

  Uriost regained herself. She tilted her visor up to reveal a youthful wolfen face. Her yellow eyes narrowed at the mysterious mammal. She took a deep breath and nodded. “So, we have a scholar in the woods with us today. Cloaked wanderer, are you responsible for this directionally-impaired one?”

  Regina studied the new mammal with hope in her heart for a rescue. He wore a tattered grey cloak over purple chainmail and scarlet grieves. It was impossible to see his eyes, due to the cloak’s heavy hood, though the closer he treaded, it became clear he was also descendent of canines by his smell, the shape of his white muzzle. The bushiness of his long charcoal tail proved his identity a fox.

  Regina shivered. “Please, just let me go. I’ve done nothing…”

  “Shut up,” growled Barrett.

  The fox came to a full stop a few feet before them all.

  “Hullo again, Sara.” His chin lifted towards the fleet of soldiers behind her, regarded Barrett and Regina, then acknowledged her again. “Is it safe to assume you’ve already made your visit to the Stone Zephyr?”

  “How did you … know about—” Uriost’s expression dulled, nostrils flexing the air that stood between her platoon and the cloaked mammal. Almost at once, her eyes hardened with shrill realization. “By the Zuut, it’s the heretic! Seize him, now!!”

  “I told you!” Barrett roared.

  The fox shook his head. “Not here. Not now, with the skunk here.”

  “Who are you to tell me where I make arrests in this land?” demanded Uriost. Her soldiers quickly dismounted, drawing sword, lance, and mace alike.

  “I have something you’re looking for, and you have something that doesn’t belong to either of us,” he said. “I don’t want the skunk to witness a similar slaughter here as those in Doblah witnessed when they tried to stop me.”

  Icy paralysis swept over the small platoon, like glacial waves Regina had read about the arctic bay of the Zeephite coast. She realized that in the most literal of senses, she had fallen face-first into something never meant to be seen.

  “Sara…” the heretic murmured. “…You can help put an end to this.”

  Uriost and her soldiers remained silent and unmoving – however, her gauntleted paw clenche
d tighter around the scarlet hilt of her own broadsword. In the distance, a crow cackled among the treetops.

  Finally, she spoke. “I intend to.”

  “Then at least let the skunk leave before we commence,” the heretic suggested. “Unless you were to kill her for simply meandering in the middle of the path. I didn’t realize disrupting the flow of pony travel was punishable by death.” He looked at Regina and asked, “Did you know of this law?”

  Regina, rigid with wide-eyed terror, quickly shook her head.

  “Strange, I know,” the heretic agreed.

  “Enough,” said Uriost. “By order of the Ministry of Peace, you are charged with murder, theft, and conspiracy against the Zuut. Surrender the Nimbus blade now.”

  “I think not,” said the heretic.

  “Words you’ll regret before a court,” Uriost promised. “Face it, heretic, the fat sow’s sung. Seize him!”

  The mongoose and badger rushed past with their swords at the ready. The heretic brandished a white-hilted blade from under his cloak. With two quick slashes, the soldiers crumpled at his footpads, dead.

  Barrett’s cries of horror filled the forest. “Flitcher! Augustus, by the Zuut, noooo!!”

  Uriost cursed, drawing her broadsword. The soldiers behind her raised their horned visors to reveal horror and disbelief upon their respective rabbit and feline faces. One of them reached for his pony saddle, ready to mount and escape.

  Barrett, however, tucked his blade beneath Regina’s chin. “Say so long to your little—”

  The heretic appeared before the both of them with the white-hilted sword already in mid-strike. Regina screamed at the top of her lungs. Barrett’s body safely fell away from her like a discarded shawl, while his head rolled into the road-side huckleberry bushes.

  The heretic snarled at Regina. “Get out of here!” He grabbed her by the poncho and threw her out of the way of the fight at hand. He swung around on one heel at the sound of rapid footfalls. Uriost appeared, brought down her broadsword upon him. He deflected it without effort, their blades clashing in a mighty steel cross.

  “You killed Lieutenant Artois with that relic…” Uriost said with a strong, though shaky, voice.

  “I’ve killed many,” the heretic stated plainly, “and I’ll continue to do so until the fall of the Civil Alliance. I warned you of Doblah’s manipulation of the canines – why do you play to treachery when it is so obvious?!”

  “You speak of treachery, and yet you’re the one defiles the Blade of the Unicorn?” Uriost growled. Her lips peeled back against gritted wolfen teeth. “I’ll end you myself!”

  The heretic shoved her off of him and darted backwards on hopping heels, his weapon readied. “Don’t do this, Sara. It’s not worth it.”

  “I won’t be patronized by a petty rowst’lya,” said Uriost, and charged with her sword pointed for his heart.

  But before she was on top of him again, the heretic cracked Uriost in the side of the helmet with the hilt of his sword. He threw her into a cloud of dirt at the side of the road and brandished Nimbus against the two remaining soldiers who darted at him, ready to strike. They skidded in their tracks with eyes wide and cheeks puffed as soon the sword turned on them. In the light of the sun that peeked through the leaves overhead, Nimbus’s bloodied tip glinted brightly.

  “If you value your wretched lives, you will relinquish that saddlebag to me,” the heretic ordered with slow, definite, enunciation. “You will take your lieutenant and your fallen comrades, and you will leave this place and not turn back.”

  He nodded to Uriost’s sulfur-haired fell pony. It was over with the others, grazing in a patch of long grass as though this skirmish in the road was nothing new to them at all.

  It was the feline who wandered over to the grazing steeds. Uriost’s dark-haired pony greeted him with a gruff bray. The feline cooed to him, brushed his mane, before the pony allowed Uriost’s pack to be unhooked from the saddle. The soldier came back with it cradled in both gauntlets.

  “Shemp, you coward,” Uriost growled as the rabbit helped her to stand. “I have legs, Yarmouth, get away from me.”

  “It’s better this way,” said the heretic. He then regarded thanks to the feline soldier and took the saddlebag from him, watched in silence as the frayed platoon officers gathered their dead.

  “Remember this day when you rot in abandon within the pits of Doblah’s deepest dungeons,” Uriost swore as soon they were back on their saddles. “This isn’t the last we cross paths, heretic.”

  “As long as our silent war persists, you know it won’t be,” he stated, sheathing Nimbus.

  Uriost gave an incredulous snort. Then, with a quick snap of her reins, what remained of her unit moved out in shameful silence.

  Regina’s mouth was bone dry, and she didn’t realize until then just how much her body trembled. She shook her head, and her eyes fell to the dark pools of Life Energy that slowly absorbed into the grit and dirt of the dusty road. Words that the heretic had spoken came to mind – and along with them, thoughts of Dwain.

  …I’ve killed many … and I’ll continue to do so until the fall of the Civil Alliance...

  A horrible sensation burned at her soul.

  Beyond, the heretic peeked inside Uriost’s saddlebag and uttered a heavy sigh of relief. He threw the bag over his shoulders and started back along the road where the Alliance officers had initially come from.

  Regina found her papa’s map lay trampled and askew in the dirt. She scooped it into her paws, crushed it protectively to her chest. Tears brewed behind her eyelids.

  Regina … Regina Lepue…

  She gasped – looked up. There was no one here except for herself and the heretic. But someone had called her name. She’d heard it so clearly – as though they’d whispered right into her ear. Someone had called out to her, a voice desperate and afraid.

  …Regina…

  That’s when Regina felt it – a great swell in the invisible energies all around her. She could feel the tingle of Mana between the rocks and the trees, even at the tips of her digits as she clutched her father’s map – but there was something else. Something greater. Something that tipped the balance of the natural essence of the Energies around her. The sensation swelled in her mind again. She turned on involuntary heels and faced the heretic, as though she were connected to him by a tether of arcane essence.

  …Regina Lepue…

  She shivered at the sight of him. Was the imbalance of Mana Energy coming from this blood-lusting canine?

  No, she realized.

  The arcane connection was reaching out to her from … from inside the saddlebag.

  …Regina … help us…

  “Forget what you saw today,” the heretic suddenly called out. “Return to your home and live your life to its fullest and in peace.”

  Regina shook her head back, blinked back to reality. She watched him vanish around the jut of cedars in the road through tears of terrified uncertainty. The back of his grey cloak was riddled with a thousand tiny rips and folds, like a rain of arrows had befallen him.

  The tether of Mana Energy remained connected to Regina. The ghostly bonds of the voice swam around her mind, echoing their pleas to her.

  … help us … help us …

  30. Road to the Stone Zephyr

  Some would say the heretic was a fox without regard for good or evil. Others would agree, that he was a mammal who knew nothing of sides, save for that of his own well being – that he was simply a canine of pure chaos, who knew not of justice, nor of vengeance.

  The rumours were droppings, and anyone who thought such a thing fed on droppings. The heretic knew his place in the world. He knew the true sense of chaos that brewed over the southern mountains. He knew every inch of a sword and where best to slash the arteries of his foes.

  What else he knew was how much he detested the hot and constant Galheist winds. Never in the world did he feel such perpetual assault in all directions – not even the hazardous snow
storms of the Zeeph, nor the mammal-eating dune drifts of the Menyard Desert, seemed as persistent as the turbulent winds of this otherwise harmless continent known for its farming and fishering villages.

  But the heat was too much and collected under the heretic’s hood and fighters gear, matting his charcoal fur to pale flesh. Not even panting helped. The falcon-feathered water horn at his hip was empty by two thirds. The remainder of it went down his gullet with a lukewarm splash.

  He smacked his lips of water droplets and fresh perspiration. In the distance, about five or so leagues, the heretic saw the trees begin to part before an old stone bridge. It was moss-covered and crumbling, not used for many, many years, or at least not well-kept by any current masters.

  As he started to approach the bridge, a twig snapped somewhere off in the brush. The heretic froze in mid-step. He half turned. Hard-set eyes darted between trees, branches, shrubs, but there was nothing but the post-storm warmth of the Keeton Woods with him. His paw digits relaxed around the hilt of Nimbus, the Blade of the Unicorn.

  The faint smell of that skunk still hung in the heretic’s nostrils. He sniffed his arms and shoulders and grumbled. Skunk fear clung to everything. But at least his own scent was masked by it. He pulled his cloak back about his body and headed across the bridge with swift strides.

  Soon, he came to two great pillars connected to marble retaining walls higher than all the trees of the Keeton Woods. With a flick of his tail, the heretic glanced down either side of the barrier; the walls seemed to span forever. The tops of each pillar donned a single eagle in mid-flight; wings were spread wide, eyes sharp with beaks in mid-screech, a set of extended talons ready to claw or nab whoever dared to draw near.

  “I must be close,” said the heretic. “York spoke of pillars such as these…”

  Hot wind blasted the heretic’s cloak as he passed between the pillars, but he paid the disturbance little mind, save a paw upon his head to keep his hood in place. As he wandered deeper into the woods, the dense thicket began to peter off down a slight incline. Beyond lay a clearing where cedars and spruces opened up to a partially-hidden pathway off to the right, where the ground had been dug up and filled in with cobblestone for a crude road. Regolith spilled down around the heretic’s heels with every careful sidestep towards the clearing.