by Peter Plasse
With the three youths gathered into a tight cluster, their faces drawn tight with the mention of hostiles surrounding them, Forrester knelt in front of them. “I have received some grave news with both personal and strategic implications. My oldest and dearest friend is dying, and we must journey to her home so that I can be with her at the end. Her name is Cirrhus Wishfor. She is a powerful sorceress. For many years she instructed me in the use of magic, until my relationship with her was torn asunder by … life’s circumstances. I have not seen her for years. Now, as I have said, there are some Trolls, and a lot more Gnomes, in a rough circle all around us. Ordinarily we would be entirely alone out here, as far away from Ghasten as we are, but the Gnome nation has chosen to send some sort of political envoy to the Slovan capital city. So a small squad of the palace guard has been sent out to meet him and escort him in to assure his safe arrival. They, and an entire company of Gnomes, are all scouring these woods right now, checking for possible threats. Those, of course, would be us. I have reconnoitered their positions, however, and I believe we can slip through them. We will have to leave the horses and make our way on foot. We will travel light, taking only what we absolutely need. We must travel in a cloak of silence, yet we must travel swiftly because we need to make it into the Vargus Foothills by sunup, or we will surely be discovered. And we cannot, of course, have that happen.”
“What will happen to the horses?” asked Gracie.
“Not to worry, young Gracie,” said Forrester, “They will meet up with us once we have made it to the Vargus Foothills. In fact, it will be essential that they do, for you three will need to have mounts at that point in order to travel quickly enough to get us there in time.”
“In time for what?” asked Ryan.
“Never mind that, Ryan,” said Orie. “We too have news.”
Forrester turned to Orie.
“News?” he asked, his voice low, rumbling.
“Yes,” said Orie. “We looked at the maps, and there’s a new dot on them that we think is my little sister, Jacqueline.” He undid the sheaf of maps that Ryan and Gracie had carefully tied back up as part of their preparations for settling in. He handed the one he wanted to Forrester.
“Here,” he said. “In this place called the Agden Woods.”
Forrester studied it. “This is not good news.”
“What do you mean?” asked Orie. “Can we be sure that this dot is Jacqueline?”
“Almost certainly,” said Forrester. “But you need to know this: The world on which we now stand carries the name of Inam'Ra. The three nation states that make it up are Ravenwild, Vultura, and Slova. But there are also two vast tracts of land that are part of the whole, the Northland, which has never carried another name, and the Agden Forest to the south. Both are ‘spelled’.”
“What does that mean, ‘spelled’?” asked Orie.
“What it means is that we can’t go there,” said Forrester. “These places are protected by powerful magic. No one can enter. And even were that to happen, most certainly no one leaves.”
“Then how did Jacqueline get there?” asked Gracie, her voice full of skepticism.
“That,” said Forrester, “I cannot say.”
“Listen,” said Orie, “If that’s my sister in there, then that’s where we’re going. Now.” Despite speaking as softly as he was, there was no mistaking the resolve behind his words.
“Agreed,” said Ryan. “Agreed,” said Gracie.
Nobody spoke for a while.
“Could your friend, maybe, help us with this?” asked Gracie. “You said she was a powerful sorceress. Maybe she knows a way to get us in and out.”
“Well,” said Forrester, “It appears we have yet another reason to visit her. All right then, eat all the food, drink as much water as you can, and fill the waterskins. I will speak to the horses.”
He moved over to the horses while the three children ate the last of their food. Since there was hardly any left, it didn’t take long. Forrester placed his huge hands over the heads of each of them, one at a time, and whispered softly into their ears. Each seemed to nod as he finished.
They all drank their fill from the waterskins, and Orie moved to the spring in the back of the thicket to refill them. Ryan started at once to organize their gear. Grace sat mesmerized by the interaction that was happening between Forrester and the animals.
“Look at that,” she whispered to Ryan.
“At what?”
“The way he’s talking to the horses. It’s, it's like he’s really talking to them. Like, you know, like they were people. Look at the way they nod to him. The animals here seem to be completely different than they are at home, like they are capable of thinking.”
“Mmmm,” answered Ryan. “What are we supposed to do with all these maps?” he asked. “We can’t take all of them. They’re too heavy.”
“Take all of them,” said Orie, back from his task. “We’ll need them all. Divide them up evenly. Make sure that each of us gets one that shows the whole continent. Then make sure that each of us gets an assortment of the local ones. When you finish, we’ll go over them and determine a place that we can meet up in case we get separated.”
“Orie, shouldn’t we be going straight to Jacqueline?” asked Gracie. “She could be dying right now.”
Orie thought for a second. “Remember when we all went together to Disneyworld two years ago, and the flight attendant lady was talking about what to do if the Oxygen masks came down in flight, and she said to be sure and secure your own mask before you tried to help anyone else?”
Ryan and Gracie nodded.
“I think it’s like that,” he said. “Forrester knows what he’s doing, and his friend, what was her name?”
“Cirrhus Wishfor,” said Gracie.
“Right, well she must be like, like the Oxygen Lady. We need to take care of us before we can try to take care of Jacqueline.”
“Yeah, and I remember your mother saying she would definitely secure our masks first,” said Ryan.
“Well,” said Orie, “that’s just Mom.”
Forrester rejoined them, and they finished the task of stripping down to the minimum amount of gear. They each now had a sword, a waterskin, a longbow with a quiver of arrows, two stout knives, and a much-lightened pack containing the maps.
Orie reached for one of the crossbows and a brace of darts.
“Leave it,” said Forrester. “They rattle, and a Gnome will hear it and know what it is from half a mile out.”
“How are we going to get rid of the rest of this stuff?” asked Ryan. “We can’t have it discovered by the Trolls.”
“Good thinking, young Ryan,” said Forrester.
He held out the palm of his hand and a small flame appeared. He set it on the ground and soon the entire thicket was going up in a blaze.
“Now, we go.” he rumbled. “Stay close, and stay quiet. The Gnomes have the keenest hearing of any creature on Inam'Ra. No more talking. Come now.”
The first few hours after they left their temporary hiding place, things were uneventful. They moved slowly but steadily ahead over the plains, Forrester regularly testing the wind with his nose. The fire he had set gradually faded in the distance, and now they were as four wraiths drifting on a sea of open land. The horizon extended to infinity in every direction. Forrester chose their course with extreme caution, floating soundlessly from bush, to tree, to windblown, always staying low lest hostile eyes spy him moving along.
They paused for a much needed drink from their waterskins, all kneeling, and he brought them in close, wrapping his huge hands around their heads as he had done with the horses. Each clearly heard his voice in their heads, but it didn’t seem like he was really speaking.
“The Gnomes are to either side of us. From here, we crawl. Two hundred yards and we will be by them. No noise. Well done so far. We’re almost there.”
All three nodded and Forrester started to crawl away. It was easy to keep up with him, as he set a snail
’s pace. It took over an hour to slither their way to the edge of the Vargus Foothills, the hearts of the children all hammering as one.
Again he brought them together as he had done before. Again they heard his voice loud and clear in their heads without him actually speaking. “Something I forgot to mention. If there is trouble, and you have to run for it, give the horses their heads. Let them go. They will know what to do. Let them go, they will know what to do.”
Again the children nodded.
Slowly, then, they crawled further and further up the slope of the Vargus Foothills. With the passage of each minute they began to feel a little safer. They reached a large flat that was covered by patches of small trees and strewn with massive boulders. Forrester gathered them in again. This time he did speak to them in a gravelly whisper. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with the horses. They’re close by. I can smell them. They are all there.” Gracie managed a small smile. “No noise.”
A few minutes passed, then a few more, then a few more.
Then it all came undone.
They heard the horses galloping towards them, their hooves thundering like rifle shots on the hard scrabble of the floor of the flat, and Forrester appeared at its dimly illuminated edge in the distance. “Mount up and ride!” he bellowed. “Towards that moon!” He waved wildly at the moon directly in front of them. “One half-mile! Go now! Go!” And then he went down, covered by Gnomes who were stabbing and slashing at him wildly with their daggers and short swords.
The horses pulled up. The children jumped on them and began to race away. Orie was immediately thrown as Thunder reared up, having taken an arrow in his well-muscled flank. A Gnome raced towards him, his sword flashing in the moonlight, as Orie lay without moving a hair. He was only a few steps from him when Ryan hollered, “Fury, stop!”
Fury put the brakes on hard, and Ryan sailed over his head, hitting the ground hard with a grunt. Lightning braked hard too, but Gracie managed to keep her seat, watching with terror as the Gnome closed the final distance between them. Orie’s eyes opened, and he groaned as the Gnome raised the deadly weapon above him. Ryan rolled once, nocking an arrow as he came to a knee. The sword began its deadly descent at the exact instant as the twang of Ryan’s bow sounded the release of his arrow. Gracie screamed, “No!”
The arrow found its mark, piercing the chest of the Gnome soldier, his sword falling harmlessly away. Gracie wheeled her stallion wildly and yelled, “Lightning, go to Orie.” She galloped at breakneck speed towards him, shouting, “Thunder, go to Orie.”
She reined him in hard at the spot where Orie lay unmoving, dismounted, and rushed towards him.
Another Gnome emerged from the edge of the flat, running towards Gracie and the fallen boy. Orie shook his head, dazed and confused from the fall.
“Gracie!” screamed Ryan, nocking his second arrow. “Watch out!” He drew up on the charging Gnome, fired, and missed.
Gracie ripped the arrow from Thunder’s flank and turned to face the soldier, who now stood directly before her. She tried to draw her sword but it was too late. He knew this, and paused to smile viciously at her.
He lifted his arm to deliver the fatal blow when Orie leapt to his feet. His sword arm was a blur as he unsheathed his weapon and swung it at the Gnome all in one fluid motion. It caught the soldier’s sword arm right below the elbow and he shrieked in pain. Each jumped on the backs of their mounts and started to flee, but the Gnome soldier was not done with his deadly attack. With his remaining good arm he drew a nasty looking dagger and dove at the back of Thunder, attempting to wrap his partially severed arm around the rump of the horse. But Thunder saw it coming and twisted smartly, catching the Gnome square in the chest with a flashing
hoof, knocking him violently backwards, where he fell, most surely, dead.
The three of them, once again all astride their mounts, charged forward in the direction of the moon. There was no sign of Forrester, but they had no time to check further as they sped away, now running for their lives.
Reaching the edge of the flat, for the better part of half an hour they battled their way upwards on a steep incline that threatened to unseat each one of them all the way. At the top it leveled out again. Now the horses turned on the jets. Gracie noticed that Ryan was having a hard time staying atop Fury.
“Ryan!” she yelled. “Lie down! Lie down!”
He did, holding on tight, and had a much easier time of it as they sped across the flat in the direction of the moon. They reached the edge of it at full gallop in a few seconds when it precipitously ended, a vast canyon now before them, with nothing but empty space in view. Not a one of them had time to think of reining in their mounts. Instead, they rocketed off the precipice and into the night.
All were thunderstruck as the underwings deployed and their crazy fall suddenly turned into a gentle glide.
Orie managed a surprised, “Wow.”
Neither Gracie nor Ryan said a thing, each silently grateful for the fact that they were alive. They had made it! There was hope.
They landed on the edge of a river, touching down gently on a grassy bank.
“That,” said Ryan, “was the most awesome thing I have ever done.”
Orie marveled at his best friend’s ability to comment on their wondrous flight down, having barely escaped with their lives. Gracie went immediately to the task of repacking the underwings, asking them for their help. Together they figured it out, and after the horses had gotten a drink, they led them into the cover of the woods.
After a few minutes, now wrapped in shadows, they stopped to get their bearings.
“Hey RyeRye,” said Orie, “nice shot.”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes you have to improvise.”
Gracie had moved to Thunder’s flank and was cleaning the wound with water as best she could. He snuffed a few times in protest, but held perfectly still as Gracie did her first aid work. “You did pretty well yourself, Orie,” she exclaimed.
“I know it,” said Ryan. “You cut his arm clean off. That was awesome! Man, you should have seen the look on his face whe … ”
Gracie interrupted. “Now what do we do?”
“We get as far away from here as we can,” said Orie. “They’ll be coming for us, and they’ll know how to find us. Ryan, get out the maps. We have to move.”
Together they all knelt and peered at them. In the dimness, they all strained to make out the details, when suddenly Gracie said, “Hey, look at that. This is us, and look, there’s an extra dot.” She pointed with a finger at the three dots that indicated their position beside the riverbank, the other of which was located on a hill to the northeast of the one from which they had leapt.
“That has to be Forrester,” mused Orie.
“Must be,” agreed Ryan.
“No question,” murmured Gracie.
“We have to rescue him,” said Orie.
“Are you crazy?” whispered Ryan. “No way. It’ll never happen. There is no way we can go back up there. That’s suicide. They would catch us for sure.”
“How do we know if he’s still alive?” asked Gracie. “It looked pretty bad to me.”
“Yeah, Orie. He was covered with Gnomes when we last saw him, and they were carving him up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey.”
“I agree.” said Orie, “But I can’t see him showing up as an extra dot here,” he gestured at the map, “unless he’s alive. Somebody put him on the map as a dot, and it was most likely him. Who else would it be? And I’d be willing to bet he did it to let us know he is still alive. We have to try. He saved our lives. If he had not yelled to us and given himself up, we would all be dead now. Besides, we need him to get to his friend’s house, the witch lady. Without her, we can forget about rescuing Jacqueline, and that is not up for negotiation.”
Ryan stood and surveyed their surroundings.
“Well, whatever we’re going to do, we have to do it fast,” he said. “Like you said, they�
�ll be coming for us. What do you want to do, Orie?”
Orie continued to study the map. “Okay,” he said. “This is it. Final word. You guys ride west. Anywhere. Don’t get caught. Eat bugs. Eat berries. Eat frogs if you have to. Eat whatever you can. Make sure you fill your waterskins and water the horses every chance you get. They can graze for their food. I’m going to go back and get Forrester. They’ll never expect it. I have to try.”
As an afterthought, he added. “Take Thunder with you. If they’re tracking you, and they will, they’ll think I’m with you.”
“How will you find us?” asked Gracie.
“The dots,” he said.
He folded up a few of the maps and shoved them in his pack. “Don’t worry, we’ll find you. Go now.”
Gracie and Ryan exchanged meaningful looks.
“Go,” he repeated. “Get out of here. Keep your wits about you. I don’t want to have to be rescuing you too.”
They all exchanged a brief hug, and Gracie and Ryan moved off deeper into the forest gloom.
Orie watched them go and swallowed hard. “I must be nuts,” he thought to himself.
Even so, he knew he had to do it. If not to honor the Troll, who had not only befriended them but had also saved their lives, he knew that without Forrester they probably had no chance of rescuing his sister. So, with the same determination with which he donned his football helmet to take the field and lead his team, he started off, making his way slowly along the riverbank and hugging the cover of the growth along its bank. He didn’t hurry, but spent a lot of time sweeping behind him with branches he picked up along the way to cover his tracks. He spied a dense tangle of vines and cut off several lengths, jamming them into his pack.
The sun was high in the midmorning sky when he collapsed from exhaustion and slept.
He awoke as the sun was setting, the sky colored in dazzling pink and violaceous swirls. He was disoriented at first, but quickly came to his senses, painfully remembering the task at hand.
