“Not even the white lady could possess such beauty,” he said in wonder. Telyn made a sound of delight as well.
The wisp curtsied in mid-air, as if to acknowledge the compliment. She then pointed off into the swamp and made a series of short flights in that direction. Each time she returned to them and repeated the action.
Brand and Telyn looked at one another.
“Normally,” said Telyn. “I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that we follow a wisp, but this is a special circumstance.”
Brand nodded. “Indeed. This is the first time that I ever thought any of the Faerie could be trusted. I guess it is with them as Dando said, ‘Friendship is always earned, never given.’”
So saying, the two of them followed the wisp out of the fern forest and into the rest of Old Hob’s Marsh, going they knew not where.
They followed the wisp until dawn began to lighten the sky. Ever they begged her to rest, but she urged them onward. They didn’t know where she was leading them, but hoped it was to their companions, or a way out of the swamp, or just to the cabin of a marshman who could help them.
Just before dawn the wisp halted and pointed East, in the direction they had been going. They took it to mean that they should continue forward. To Telyn, she flittered close and caressed her cheek. Telyn smiled and touched the spot delicately. To their amazement the spot on her cheek and her hand where she touched it glowed for a time with the same radiance as the wisp.
When they looked up, they found she had gone. They cast about them for some sign of her, but could find nothing, not even a distant glimmer.
“She’s gone back to her family,” said Telyn. She still gazed down on the tiny spot, now fading, that glowed upon her fingertips.
“They are clearly creatures of the night rather than the day,” agreed Brand heartily. He sat down upon a relatively dry spot and leaned back against a gnarled tangle of tree roots. To him they were as comfortable as a featherbed.
“Ah! I’d thought she would lead us to Snowdon before she was done,” he sighed.
“Perhaps we should keep going,” said Telyn worriedly, looking to the East. “Perhaps the others need us.”
“Surely you jest, milady,” mumbled Brand through thick lips. Already his eyes had closed. “I, unlike the wisps, am a creature of day. Also unlike them, and yourself, I need sleep.”
“But the others, Brand.”
“If they have suffered the night, they can hold another hour. I have no strength left to rescue them now, if that’s what they are needing. Besides, we don’t really know what the wisp was leading us to. Maybe this is just a garden spot of the swamp to her, and she wanted to show it to us!” said Brand, making a clumsy, sweeping gesture that indicated their drab surroundings. Even while gesturing, his eyes stayed shut. The brightening skies of dawn seemed painful to his weary eyes.
With a sigh, Telyn sat beside him.
Chapter Fifteen
Merlings
In the light of morning, he awoke, shivering. The tree roots had cruelly dug their way into his back and ribs, causing a dozen sharp aches and cramps. He eyed the marshlands around himself blearily, realizing that for perhaps the first time in his life he was truly and utterly lost.
Then he noted the only source of warmth that touched him. He looked down upon Telyn, asleep upon his shoulder, and smiled. Although the weight of her slightly discomforted him and the roots that dug into his back from behind made him want to stretch, he did not move. This was a moment to dream of. Telyn slept on his shoulder, touching him. A thrill of pride and contentment and protectiveness shot through him.
The sleep had done him a world of good. He lay back and breathed deeply of the morning air. It stank, but he didn’t care. Out on his own like this, with Telyn, he felt more like a man than he ever had. It was exciting and daunting, all at the same time.
Soon, he could stand the pinching of his shoulder no longer. To relieve it, he rolled it slightly under her weight. To his disappointment she awakened almost instantly. She made a small sleep-sound that made him smile again, then she blinked at the world. She yawned and it seemed to him that even her yawn was attractive somehow.
“Morning,” he said quietly.
“We’ve slept for hours!” she exclaimed, staggering up.
Brand winced at the pain in his shoulder and back, but tried not to let on. “Yes, we should be moving.”
“You should have awakened me, Brand,” she scolded, picking up her things. She emptied out her knapsack, which she still had after all this time, and handed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“Put the axe in it.”
“Right,” said Brand, thinking of the axe for the first time. He felt a pang of worry, but quickly found it leaning against the tree beside him. “I’ll look like Gudrin’s over-grown son with this thing moving about like a full game-bag on my back.”
The axe barely fit into the knapsack, and Brand worried that its razor-edged blades would cut through the leather. The handle poked out of the top so that there was no way to hide it.
“Well, people are going to know what you have,” said Telyn, putting her things into various pockets of her muddy cloak and tunic. “But at least there is less chance of you getting bewitched again by accident.”
“Yes. Now if I wield the axe, there will be no question that it was my choice to do so.”
Telyn glanced at him sharply. She nodded. “Let us hope so.”
After making a poor breakfast of the odds and ends from Telyn’s tunic and a few swallows from Brand’s waterskin, they set off in the direction of the rising sun. Soon, they came upon signs of merlings: a woven mesh of reeds designed to trap and drown six-legged muckfish, a clutch of sucked-dry bird’s eggs and last a totem made of a skull. The skull had braided strips of hide and was decorated with chips of colored glass. Brand recognized the totem as a crude effigy of Herla.
Brand felt a sudden urge to crush the effigy. He advanced on it, a growl emanating from his throat.
“Brand!” hissed Telyn. “Don’t! We can’t afford the noise or any obvious signs of our presence!”
Brand halted, shoulders hunched. He sighed. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Telyn nodded with pursed lips. She gave the axehandle that rode his back a long, mistrustful look. Then she continued eastward and Brand followed, feeling sheepish.
Speaking only in whispers and moving with stealth they approached what could only be a merling village. Brand had never seen one before, but knew that the best time to venture near one was in the brightest light of day, when the merlings were at their most sluggish.
They came close enough to see the earthen mounds before the River Folk quailed. Telyn sank down behind a gnarled tree trunk and Brand knelt by her. Brand studied the village with interest. The entire encampment was difficult to spot unless you knew what you were looking for. All surrounded by a central pond, he counted six of the long, low lodges made of muck and woven sticks. All of the lodges abutted trees and seemed like unnatural extensions of the trees’ root systems. Each of the squat, cancerous mounds would have multiple secret tunnels that led into the surrounding pond.
“What do we do?” Telyn hissed.
“The wisp wouldn’t have led us here without a reason. One or more of our companions have got to be here.”
Grabbing him, Telyn pointed to a fluttering object near one of the great mounds. It was a staff of hickory with three ribbons fluttering from it, two green and one white. One of the green ribbons was torn and partially missing.
“Our parlay symbol. If they live, they are here,” she hissed. “We must rescue them somehow.”
“I agree,” whispered Brand. Despite the seriousness of the situation he found that it was pleasant to whisper into her ear. He enjoyed the opportunity for his lips to touch her skin. “But if they are nothing but bones in a stewpot,” —he shuddered at the thought— “I don’t wish to join them.”
Nodding, Telyn rose up. “Wait
here, I have an idea,” she said, and headed off to the right. Brand half-reached to restrain her, but as usual her thoughts and actions were one and she was already in motion. He watched her closely from concealment until she disappeared from sight behind one of the mounds.
He sighed quietly, wondering if he would need to wield the axe again. The axe was suddenly alive in his knapsack, and almost caused him to cry out, thinking a merling was pawing him. It had shifted its weight of its own accord, as he had seen it do upon Gudrin’s back. It made his skin crawl to think of it. It was unnatural and beyond his experience. Such a thing would have sent him off screaming a month ago, but now it seemed only odd and discomforting. He reflected upon the breaking of the Pact and the great changes it had wrought upon his world.
His thoughts were broken by a burbling sound followed by a splash. He craned his neck around the tree trunk. Telyn was a master of stealth, but she had perhaps met her match with the merlings. They had come upon her from behind, showing only their bulbous eyes above the surface of their placid pond. Lurching up out of the water with croaking sounds of dubious meaning, they stalked her. Telyn was in the middle of investigating one of the mounds, looking and listening for signs of captive humans. She turned to run, but found herself cut off.
Brand rose up and reached for the axe. Again it shifted its weight, as if eager to be out of the dark knapsack. He hesitated, wondering if he could control it this time. He drew in a breath to call to Telyn. Perhaps if he could distract the merlings, she could yet escape. He watched as she reached first for her bow, then realizing they were too close, drew her knife instead. The approaching merlings paused, hissing. It was not their way to face an armed human in daylight. They themselves clutched tridents and weighted cords from which dozens of sharp, barbed hooks dangled. These cords they slowly began to whirl over their heads. Used like a whip, they could bring a human down, tearing up an ankle or forearm in the process.
Brand ran now, but the merlings hadn’t noticed him yet, so intent were they on stalking Telyn. They advanced slowly, allowing time for reinforcements to slither up from the pond. Telyn backed to the end of the spit of land she was on and looked with desperation to the water on both sides.
Brand felt her fear. “No! Not the water! Keep to the land!” he cried out.
The merlings whirled to look at him. Telyn took this moment to slash at one of them. It’s arm oozed and it croaked in dismay. The pack of them retreated one step, then two.
More of them rose up from the pond and Brand saw he had no choice but to wield the axe once more. They were not going to give her up without a fight. With a silent pray to the River to guide him, he reached back over his shoulder. He had no need to grope for the axehandle. It slapped itself into his hand.
Ecstasy coursed through him. It began in his fingertips, ran up the palm of his hand and forearm, then seemed to linger a moment in his bicep before racing hotly into his head. His head filled with the coppery scent of hot blood.
He ripped Ambros from the pack, not bothering with the flaps. The blades slid through the leather with ease and sang as they blazed into the gray light of the morning. Brand charged at the merlings, his face split wide with a toothy grin. Most of them fled into the safe waters of their pond, slipping into the muck and filth that meant home and safety to them. Two sought to stand before him. The first swung its weighted cord laced with gleaming hooks. Ambros slipped forward and severed the cord first, then the neck of its wielder. The creature’s head and the weighted end of the cord both flew out to splash into the murky waters of the pond. The second merling fared no better and fell into the mud clutching its spilled vitals.
Ambros gleamed happily as it drank their small lives. These killings did not slake its thirst, however, but only brought its desire to a furious boil. Whooping, Brand felt detached from himself. Almost by itself, the axe swept gracefully at Telyn’s white neck. Brand turned the axe from slaying her with a deft twist, almost an afterthought, before he waded into the pond itself after the enemy. From his lips erupted an ancient battlesong, one he could not recall having heard before, in a tongue that was only remotely recognizable to him.
In the water, however, the slothful merlings became quick and graceful. They fled from him with rapid flips of their limbs. One even broke the surface and flew through the air in its haste to avoid him, like a salmon leaping from the cold water of the river. Left without enemies, Brand headed for the nearest of the lodges. Standing over it, he hewed out great chunks of the thick walls. Woven sticks and muck flew everywhere. Inside, females and their offspring squirmed in the unfamiliar sunlight. Two clutches of eggs were in evidence. One of the females that brooded over them didn’t flee. She hunkered over her eggs protectively. An odd growl emanated from her throat.
Brand paused for the first time. He raised the axe and it winked. The lightning-like flash of light blinded the merlings so that they cried out, shielding their eyes. The sight of these creatures, so many maggots swarming upon meat, filled him with disgust, but still he did not strike.
The stewpot.
Brand blinked in confusion.
Look at the stewpot. It was there that they cooked your friends.
Brand looked at the crude stewpot that sat in the middle of the torn-open lodge. It was empty, but he knew that in just such stewpots, many humans had ended their lives, often boiled alive and screaming. Still, the female held her ground, protecting her young, and hissed at him. Still, Brand did not strike.
It was here that they boiled your parents. Their skin sloughed from their bubbling flesh.
Brand made an odd sound. He lifted the axe for a killing blow. Then, without warming, something struck his wrists and the axe dropped from his grasp.
Treachery—-! the word screamed in his mind as the axe fell.
“What’s wrong with you, Brand?” yelled Telyn in his ear. “They’re coming with catapults! They’ll pepper us with bolts from the safety of the pond! We must flee!”
Brand whirled on her. “You must not touch the axe!”
Telyn looked at him for a moment, then grabbed up the axe with her cloak, careful not to touch it with her bare hands. She ran with it toward the shore, splashing through the shallowest part of the pond.
“THIEF!” roared Brand, chasing her. He ignored the catapults that snapped and sang around him. Murder shown in his eyes.
He chased Telyn into the forest, quickly outdistancing the merlings on land. When he finally caught up with her, the madness had left him.
“I—” he panted, “I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay,” she gasped out, letting the axe drop to the wet ground. “I shouldn’t have run off by myself. By the River, the thing is heavy!”
Brand nodded. “It is heavy when it does not want to go with you, but as light as straw when you slay with it.” He looked at Telyn. “We could have been killed, you know.”
Telyn nodded. She chewed her lip and her eyes were wide with fright.
“I killed merlings.” he said in wonder. “It was almost like killing men. It was terribly easy, Telyn. Part of me—part of me enjoyed it.”
She just stared at him. Then he opened his arms, and they embraced, standing over the axe.
“I must learn to control it,” he whispered into her ear.
“Yes,” she said softly.
They both looked at the axe that lay at their feet. The mud of the marsh wouldn’t stick to the Jewel or the blade. As the River Folk watched, the muck seemed to turn to liquid and crawl from the surface of the gleaming blades. Brand wondered if it would eventually kill his friends…or even him.
* * *
Tomkin searched for days before he caught up with Dando again. He’d taken to questioning wisps, who had attended the party in the marsh. Wisps were notoriously gossipy and unreliable. They did not maliciously lie, but they definitely did embellish when pressed for details. They didn’t like to disappoint their questioners, and tended make things up, lost in the moment of excitement, improving a tal
e to the point of distortion.
After being led to foxholes in the dead of night, circles of stones at the bottom of waterfalls and lost Fae mounds in the Deepwood, he finally got a tip from a vermilion wisp. Grumbling and suspicious, he followed her to the foot of the Black Mountains. There, he realized she was flittering straight up a rocky cliff. That was all very well when one had wings, but the climb looked long indeed and it was barely two hours before dawn broke.
Tomkin hesitated there, staring up into the starry night after the reddish ball of color which was the wisp. She was oblivious to whether he still followed or not, so excited was she to have the attention of another of the Fae. The wisps considered themselves to be very low in status, and so accounted the Wee Folk as gentile and impressive, when to all others they were only sneer-worthy. The attitude was endearing, but consistent failures had embittered Tomkin. He sighed, staring upward after the wisp.
He considered abandoning the quest for the night, but then something caught his eye. Was that a flash up above? There it was again! A flicker of light from on high. Something way up, perhaps on the very mountaintop…on the roof of the world. The winds and feel of the night wasn’t right for a storm. There was no thunder. If this were lightning, then it was silent lightning. Taking in a great breath, he began the climb. Perhaps, when he got there, he would at least witness something of interest.
The climb was worse than he had imagined. When he finally reached the summit, he found a bald expanse of rock, black as pitch in the night. There was no moon riding overhead, and starlight was all he had to guide him as he walked over the mountaintop. The wisp had departed by then—her kind never had anything resembling patience. She had probably forgotten who she had led to this lonely place the moment he was out of sight, and had buzzed away to irritate another fool.
Tomkin kicked at loose pebbles and wandered the mountaintop. Then he saw it again—up close and brilliant. It was a flash of such intense blue that it appeared white. He squawked and called out: “Hullo?”
Have 2 Sky Magic (Haven Series 2) Page 13
