The Druid Queen

by Douglas Niles

  Tavish almost shouted a suicidal warning, so certain was the blow and so unprepared seemed its lumbering target. The assembled humanoids grew silent in that instant, the collective breath of the monstrous army held in tense anticipation of the duel’s outcome. Ignoring the impulse to close her eyes, Tavish watched in spellbound horror, waiting for the fatal penetration.

  But suddenly it was the giant who, with lightning speed, dropped out of sight. In that instant, before even the monsters roared their approval or dismay, she understood. He had feigned his weakness.

  The troll shrieked in agony and, though she couldn’t see the firbolg, this time Tavish heard that mighty club smash into trollish bone. The horrid attacker fell, and the firbolg rose into her line of sight, lifting the club above his head and then driving it downward onto the unseen form below.

  Again the troll howled, and for excruciating moments, the hidden bard watched the club rise and fall, hearing the piteous cries grow weaker, until finally they ceased altogether. Even then the club fell brutally three more times before the firbolg finally lowered the weapon to the dock. No sound emerged from the unseen form at his feet. In fact, Tavish couldn’t imagine that the troll was anything more than a gory pulp.

  At once, the firbolg stumbled, and several of his fellows dashed forward to support him. Tavish saw a stooped old female firbolg, who nevertheless stood at least eight feet tall, step forward to dab something at the giant’s wound. Red blood continued to gush from the small slice, and finally the healer insisted that the warrior lie down.

  Tavish drew back into her niche, intrigued enough by the scene she had witnessed to forget momentarily the painful cramps that had once again started to numb her legs. There seemed to be precious little unity in this monstrous army, for unless her guess was way off the mark, she had just observed a battle between the leaders of separate factions.

  She wondered what would happen next. The possibility of waiting until dark and then trying to slip onto the dock began to have its appeal. Perhaps she could get ashore and disappear into the night.

  Sunset was still many hours away, however, when firbolg after firbolg began to climb into the ship. As the bard drew back from clumping, intrusive feet, she hardly dared to breathe, cringing against the backbreaking thwart and pressing as far as she could under the low overhanging bench. She forced herself to be absolutely silent. At the same time, she wanted to scream her dismay, for she had no doubt as to what was going on.

  And in fact, a few minutes later, her suspicions proved correct. The firbolgs pushed the Princess of Moonshae away from the dock and floated toward the rolling waters of the Strait of Oman.

  * * * * *

  Princess Deirdre stalked through Corwell Town in the dark of the night, wearing the guise of her magic as an impenetrable disguise. Those who passed her saw nothing save a ripple in the blackness. Perhaps they felt a shiver of disquiet as they hurried on their way, rationally certain that there was nothing there, yet spiritually unconvinced.

  Thus undiscovered, she entered the hutch of a farmyard, finding a proud rooster slumbering peacefully on his roost nearby. With a sharp twist of her hands, she wrung the bird’s neck, quickly dropping the feathered body into her large leather sack.

  Next she came upon a dog, slumbering before its master’s doorstep. The screen of nothingness was so impermeable that the hound didn’t sense the young woman’s approach, nor did it see the keen dagger that slit the coarse fur of its throat. Withdrawing the dripping blade, the princess lowered a small cup, collecting the blood that flowed from the severed artery.

  She repeated the ritual with a great draft horse that stood slumbering in a livery yard, gathering the dying steed’s blood in a larger container. Finally, then, she was ready to return to the castle on the knoll, which she did on the wings of her magic, disdaining the winding road that climbed toward the gatehouse and fortress walls.

  Settling her feet on the lofty parapet of those walls, she searched for the final element of her brew. Undisguised now, she came upon a pacing guard. The man bowed respectfully, so he didn’t see the still-crimson blade dart outward. He fell silently, staring mute and uncomprehending at the young woman who stood over his bleeding corpse.

  Her eyes shining in the darkness, Dierdre knelt and gathered the last sample of blood. Then, in a swirl of her dark cloak, she passed through a door and entered the darkened hallways of the keep.

  * * * * *

  “Splendid … the components of might are in your hands, my daughter.” The immortal form of Talos twisted and heaved in anticipation. The princess of the Moonshaes was his now! He well knew that, with the striking of her dagger, she had forever turned her back on her people and their dying faith.

  In his struggles, Talos had learned an important lesson—that the Earthmother must be struck away from the heart of her power, away from Myrloch Vale. Deirdre had begun that attack, gathering the vital tools of destruction. She would become a powerful agent of the New Gods, bringing the goddess to her knees in final defeat.

  For that purpose, she would be linked to another tool. That one still slumbered to the north, but soon he would be awakened, emerging for his vengeance from the very shadow of the Icepeak.

  The ultimate sword of chaos would be the demigod, Grond Peaksmasher, finally freed from his goddess-imposed confinement.

  10

  Perilous Pathways

  The muscular steed galloped like a pale ghost along the open floor of the forest, carrying her silver-armored rider beneath overhanging limbs and around large, moss-covered boulders. Brigit gave the fleet war-horse free rein, and the white Synnorian mare flew through misty meadows and dank, overgrown thickets.

  Sensing, after several miles, the nearness of her destination, the elfwoman exerted slight pressure with her knees, bringing the mare’s headlong race to a gentle, cautious trot. In another moment, a small figure emerged from the brush, and the horse, grown used to dwarves over the past week on the trail, reared back only slightly.

  “We’re too late,” Brigit announced tersely as Finellen and Hanrald came up behind the lead dwarf. “They’ve taken Codscove even more quickly than we thought possible.”

  The dwarven column gradually came into view behind the leaders. Hanrald led his great war-horse, while the dwarves, on foot, marched steadily along behind.

  “What are they doing now?” asked the dwarven captain.

  “It looks like they’ve started along the shore to the east. There are several small villages and at least one good-sized town in their path.”

  “Damn!” spat Hanrald. “We can’t let them run wild!”

  “Just what I’ve been sayin’ for a week now,” grumbled Finellen. “Weren’t you the one who told me to wait for King Kendrick?”

  Hanrald spun away in irritation. His mind whirled through conflicting pictures of his duty. On the one hand, the king was sure to come, with sufficient men-at-arms to confront the horde with a reasonable chance of success. As it was, they had a mere fourscore dwarves or so, coupled with a human earl and an elven sister knight—not a great prospect of victory in any thoughtful analysis.

  Yet they had no indication of how long it would take the king’s army to arrive on the scene, or how much damage the monstrous horde could inflict in the meantime. Indeed, they had expected Codscove to delay the beasts for several days, and instead, that prosperous hamlet had been ravaged in a few short hours.

  “You’re right—now, in any event,” muttered the proud earl, turning back to the stubborn dwarfwoman. “I don’t think we can afford to wait any longer.”

  “Did you catch sight of the Silverhaft Axe?” Finellen queried.

  “No—as much as I could see, they didn’t have it with them.”

  “Damn! What did a bunch of firbolgs want it for? Where did they take it?” the dwarf demanded.

  “Speaking of firbolgs, I was surprised to see that there aren’t that many giants in this horde—mostly trolls,” Brigit noted. “The firbolgs are only a small
fraction of the total army.”

  “I don’t care who took the axe,” Finellen snorted impatiently. “I just want it back!”

  “I’ll ride toward the town and see if I can confirm their movements,” Brigit volunteered quickly. “If they continue along the coast to the east, it might be that you can angle through Winterglen and gain some ground on them.”

  “That would be too much of a risk—and besides, it’s not necessary,” Finellen replied with a firm shake of her head. “They’ve got to go east from Codscove. A march in the other direction would take them right into the middle of the biggest swamp on Gwynneth.”

  “I remember,” Brigit agreed. “At the mouth of Codsrun Creek, isn’t it?”

  “Yup. That little stream just disappears when it gets within fifteen miles of the shore. It turns into a morass of mud flat and fen. Not a road or track through the whole thing, and not good, open forest like this, either,” Finellen concluded.

  “Then we’ve got to get ahead of them if we’re going to do any good,” Hanrald realized.

  That prospect was daunting, at the very least. On their sturdy but short legs the dwarves had difficulty maintaining a speedy march. Now they faced the prospect of not only matching the monsters’ pace, but also moving quickly enough to get ahead of them and then making a glorious, but quite probably doomed, attempt to block the pestilential advance.

  “We’re going to pick up the pace,” Finellen announced loudly. The doughty warriors uttered not a single word of complaint, Hanrald noticed, impressed. Instead, they followed the cadence of their leader’s commands, forming into their file and following steadily behind Finellen, Brigit, and Hanrald, the latter pair leading their trail-weary war-horses.

  “We’ll cut a line to the northeast,” the dwarf explained. “That should put us nearly parallel to their advance, but gradually drawing closer to the coast. I hope they won’t know we’re here, but we’ll have to take precautions.”

  “I’ll ride on the point,” Brigit offered. “That should give you fair warning. If I’m spotted, they still won’t know there’s a company of dwarves in the woods.”

  “Makes sense,” agreed Finellen.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Hanrald objected. “At least let me ride with you!”

  Brigit glared at him, her almond eyes flashing. “I don’t need you to tell me what’s ‘too dangerous’! And the chance of us both being spotted is far greater than I alone. After all, my mare has been raised as a woods runner.”

  Hanrald bit back a blunt reply. He knew that the proud sister knight was right. She’d been waging war, riding on campaign, for years before his birth. Yet a protective part of his nature worried about the thought of allowing her to ride into such danger.

  “Besides,” Finellen added, her tone surprisingly soft as she addressed Hanrald, “you’re the only other rider among us. I was hoping you’d take the outrider position on our left flank. Just to make sure they don’t try to get around us … you understand?”

  “You’re right,” agreed the Earl of Fairheight. Indeed, he and Brigit had the only two horses in the whole force. What had he been thinking, to waste that speed and mobility by trailing along with Brigit? “But I still don’t see how you intend to catch them when they can make such good time.”

  “Simple,” replied Finellen with a casual shrug. “We’ll just have to march all night.”

  * * * * *

  A growing sense of urgency propelled the High King of Moonshae. Shallot thundered along at an easy lope, his broad hooves pounding the soft earth in steady cadence. Tristan and Newt had emerged from Myrloch Vale sometime during the previous day, and now they rode through Winterglen at a steady, mile-crunching pace.

  “How come we can’t stop and look around a little bit?” pouted the faerie dragon, still perched on the high pommel before the king. “I know there’s waterfalls on the Codsrun, and some of them have great trout pools, too. Don’t you like to eat anymore?”

  “It’s a good thing I don’t like it as much as you remember,” Tristan retorted cheerfully. “You’ve put a pretty good dent in my rations!”

  “Oh, posh! Though that cheese is every bit as good as I used to think it was. Say, do you think there’s another little bit you could do without?”

  “Not now! I told you, I’m not opening up these saddlebags until we stop for the night!”

  Their course took them very near Codsrun Creek. Since his meeting with the faerie dragon, Tristan’s concentration had remained uninterrupted and intense. Yet as the hours and then the days had passed, he grew increasingly perplexed by the confusion which had overtaken him.

  Coupled with this mystery were the facts that he still didn’t know: How many days had he been riding? How far off his track had he ventured? And what had caused his disturbing lapse in reason?

  Always as he rode, he scanned the surrounding brush, studied each neighboring hilltop and tor, searching for sign of a gray body. But the wolves had disappeared, as far as he could tell, from all the world. At night, he listened carefully, but no more did their song rise to the stars.

  “Hey! What’s that?” wondered the spritely dragon, raising his narrow snout to sniff the air. “I smell a swamp!”

  In another moment, Shallot’s gait faltered, and Tristan saw that the ground before them grew tangled and thick with vines, enclosing brambles, and dense, thorny underbrush. The war-horse slowed to a walk, then finally halted altogether, unable to proceed through the thicket.

  “It is a swamp!” declared Newt, rather unnecessarily. The air had become fetid and dank. Flies rose around them, buzzing through the humid air, coming to rest on human and horse alike.

  For a moment, Tristan was puzzled. He’d had a mental picture of the Codsrun flowing all the way to the sea, and now the stream itself slowed to a brackish backwater, meandering among reeds and lilies, apparently stopping in its bed. But then he remembered: He’d sailed through the Strait of Oman many times and had never seen the mouth of that splashing stream. He did remember a stretch of marsh, however—a dank fen, actually—that covered much of the shoreline near Codscove. The stream, he deduced, must spread out and form the marsh.

  But was the fen to the west or the east of that coastal town? This was the crucial fact now, and the king wasn’t at all sure of the answer. Still, a sense of motivation propelled him, and he didn’t want to allow this terrain to slow him down.

  Which way was it? He tried to remember, all but gritting his teeth from the force of his cogitation. Finally the best he could do was to guess, his mind teased by a variety of memories, none of them certain enough to give him any degree of confidence.

  “We’ll go east,” he announced, his voice more firm than his mind. “In another day, we’ll get to Codscove.”

  “What do you want to go there for?” Newt whined. “It’s a town, isn’t it? There’s just a bunch of people there. No meadows or trees or fun stuff like that.”

  “A fishing town,” Tristan said calmly, knowing that, besides cheese, the bounty of the seas and streams was Newt’s favorite repast. “Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were whole racks of cod and salmon drying in the sun … outdoors, where everyone can see them.”

  “Say, that’s right, isn’t it?” Newt agreed, perking up. “You don’t suppose they’d mind if one or two—No, of course they wouldn’t! I don’t eat that much! How long did you say it would take to get there?”

  Tristan chuckled silently, suspecting that the faerie dragon, if he was truly hungry, would pose a serious threat to the season’s catch. The inducement worked well, however, as Newt clambered up on the pommel, eagerly looking around Shallot’s broad head, tiny nostrils quivering for any advance warning of the destination.

  They rode easily, skirting the fringe of the swampland and passing along the same type of open forest that had surrounded them for so much of the ride through the vale and Winterglen. A light breeze wafted through the woods, and the scents of flowers and ferns filled the air, overpowering any linge
ring stench of the swamp.

  In the end, Tristan’s estimate proved remarkably accurate, a fact which he found considerably reassuring. They passed several small farmsteads on the very fringe of the marshlands, all of them abandoned—at least, no one responded when the king rode Shallot up to the porch and called out a greeting.

  These were rude dwellings, for the most part, the shacks of hunters and trappers or the small cottages of poor homesteaders. None of the places showed any sign of damage, but the absence of the residents was eerie and disturbing.

  The king and the faerie dragon finally reached a larger house, several spacious rooms encircled by well-built wooden walls. A neat barn stood nearby, and Tristan heard the sounds of lowing cattle. The beasts sounded hungry, but not desperately so. Several lush grainfields and pastures were visible among the stands of oak and maple.

  Here Tristan dismounted and climbed the steps, knocking heavily against the door. He was astounded when the portal swung easily open beneath his fist.

  “Hello! Is anyone here?” he shouted. No answer reached his ears.

  “Let’s get going!” Newt urged, curled up in the saddle now that the king had left it vacant. “I’m hungry for fish.”

  “Why don’t you throw those cows some hay while I go look around?” the king suggested. “It sounds like they’re as hungry as you are.”

  “I’m not hungry for hay!” Newt protested. Nevertheless, after he listened to the bellowing for a moment, he popped into the air and flew off toward the barn.

  Finally, still hearing nothing from within the house, the High King stepped through the door and looked around a simple but comfortably furnished room. A stone fireplace occupied most of one wall, with a pair of wooden benches facing away from the hearth—a summer rearrangement, no doubt. But what most intrigued him was the table.

  He saw dirty plates scattered among half-full goblets and hastily scattered eating knives. One plate had fallen to the floor and shattered, the pieces left where they lay in the family’s haste to depart. Crossing to the cookstove, he placed his hand carefully against the burners. Cold.