by Marc Secchia
Discussion as to how the Black Wolves had discovered their whereabouts proved inconclusive. Zephyr was inclined to ascribe it to chance, while Alliathiune suspected foul play. The party agreed to redouble its vigilance.
The dark warriors had scouted the way ahead during the night, but had found no passage save one that led deeper into Mistral Bog. After some discussion, Zephyr decided that they should rather brave the swamp than risk encountering the Black Wolves again. As he could imagine little worse than a thousand hungry wolves panting on their trail, Kevin breathed a sigh of relief.
Today, for the first time, he was prepared and able to make some headway under his own steam. His leg was weak and stiff, but largely usable, and it surprised him how much stamina he showed during that morning. These developments were greeted on his part with suspicion and mistrust. Again, he began to doubt and debate the reality of this experience. Talking to Unicorns was one thing. Doing the impossible was quite another. And Feynard had served up an ever-growing catalogue of impossibilities.
He could no longer accept that he was dreaming–but neither could he formulate a convincing alternative account of his experiences thus far. Kevin, ever the scientist, began almost unconsciously to turn his attention more and more to his surroundings and became less and less focussed on his own infirmities. There was so much to learn in a new world!
The quagmire grew deeper and more treacherous as the morning wore on. Dry areas were few and far between. For the most part they waded through dank waters between knee and waist deep to Kevin, and sometimes more. The X’gäthi were forced to probe ahead carefully for a path. Strike aided them in this, and thrice warned them before they stumbled into the bubbling pits called glüalla in the Old Tongue, which meant ‘death flower’. One of the X’gäthi explained that the death flower was a carnivorous plant which grew just beneath the surface, releasing bubbles of gas laden with scents designed to attract living creatures to its deadly embrace. Pheromones, Kevin thought, intrigued. Whatever the glüalla were, he was not about to stick his toes into their lair!
Twice they caught sight of marsh deer, a stick-thin species of incongruous appearance, for they skated over the viscous surface on hooves as large and round as dinner plates and fed on the ubiquitous reed-like flora of Mistral Bog. There were many varieties of birds too, insect-eaters feasting upon the plentiful pests and grimflies that plagued the travellers–Zephyr’s tail kept switching about to keep them off his hide, but he refrained from using his magic too much, he claimed, for fear of waking things older and darker than the Forest itself. The X’gäthi hunted the birds with their deadly slings, plucking and cleaning them on the march. Kevin kept his eyes averted from such activities. Scooping out warm entrails with one’s forefinger was far too much for his delicate sensibilities! Slapping mosquitoes was more his forte–or grimflies, or whatever the nasty bloodsuckers were. He was becoming a dab hand with practice.
The outlander quickly became fed up with the endless, brackish pools, surrounded by floating mats of rich organic waste laid down by years of plant growth, which rotted and crumbled away beneath its own weight only to feed further generations. Here and there, in the drier parts, were tall fronded trees like willows, only more spreading in the branches and thicker in the leaf than those he had seen around Pitterdown Manor’s ostentatious pond. The odour of decay was pervasive. Several times vicious-looking amphibious predators stalked their party or ambushed them from the thick vegetation. The X’gäthi despatched them with characteristic competence.
Towards lunchtime, when his belly was gnawing insistently on his backbone, Kevin contrived to prove his stupidity. As he teetered on the brink of an unsteady reed island, seeking sturdier footing while the X’gäthi painstakingly picked out a safe path ahead of them, he espied some twenty or so feet to his left, a curious sight. It was a vibrant green eye, waving atop a long stalk, which was regarding him with unblinking curiosity.
“Well hello, little fellow,” he muttered, “What have we here?” The eye blinked slowly and waved slightly, as though in a breeze. Kevin grinned. “You must be the strangest creature yet in this dismal place. What an extraordinary way to wear an eye! Do you see me?”
The eye waved innocuously back and forth. Before he knew it, Kevin had taken a half-dozen or so steps towards this intriguing sight.
“Take heed!” cried a voice behind him.
Kevin turned crossly. “It’s just an–oops!” His feet skidded on a hard, slick surface concealed just beneath the mud.
Zephyr, reversing his course too hastily, splashed into a deep pool and began to struggle to swim, causing immediate alarm amongst their X’gäthi protectors. One readied a coil of rope to sling over to the Unicorn, while another two raced in Kevin’s direction, but they were mired thigh-deep and hampered by the uncertain footing. The slope suddenly tipped up, dumping the Human on his face.
“For heavens’ sake!” he squeaked, wiping his eyes. His eyes darted around in annoyance, trying to see what was happening. A wail split the air, silencing Mistral Bog’s frogs and birds instantly. “Oh … nooooo!” For he glimpsed now what had eluded him before. He slid on hands and knees into a wide, bowl-shaped depression of perhaps thirty or forty feet in diameter, which had near its centre the tall, waving stalk that had lured him thus far. But the stalk adorned the lip of an enormous, crinkled orifice that had only too clearly gaped open in anticipation of making a meal of one Kevin Jenkins!
The rim of the enormous bowl rippled gently now, speeding his progress towards that gaping maw. Kevin, shrieking in panic, attempted several times to find his feet, but these antics gained him no ground. The underlying surface was as slick as well-oiled metal. One of the X’gäthi threw a rope belatedly in his direction, but he missed his chance to seize it. He was far too panicked, and now his feet tipped over the edge …
The dark warrior leaped after him, careless of his own life, while Zephyr attacked the plant with blasts of powerful but ill-directed magic, even from where he was stuck.
An immense bellow shook Mistral Bog. A massive shadow exploded from amidst a reed-bed not ten feet athwart Zephyr’s right flank and hurled itself headlong over the rim of the carnivorous plant. Kevin squealed in terror as a huge dark shadow forced its way inside. The plant quivered; the Bog fell silent.
Kevin found himself sharing the plant’s stomach with an X’gäthi warrior and a monster.
“You stalked us since yester-lighttime,” growled the dark warrior.
In the green darkness, a pair of eyes gleamed with a radiance of their own. “Peace, good X’gäthi,” rumbled the creature. “Your Dryad speaks to the plant even now.”
Kevin did not feel peaceful. His skin was on fire. And sharing the belly of a carnivorous plant with a creature that sounded like the largest diesel engine he had ever heard was not adding to his comfort.
Without, they dimly heard the Dryad shouting at the plant. Kevin imagined tendrils of her magic stabbing through the mud and water. The walls around them shuddered. Without warning, the monster gathered them into its arms and cradled them close. A low rumbling like a minor earthquake began to build beneath their feet, and suddenly, there was a dull, muffled thud. The orifice gaped open and the three of them shot out in an enormous belch of noxious gas.
They landed with an enormous splash, deluging the Unicorn and the Dryad in viscous grey mud.
“Release your prisoners, Lurk!” Zephyr snapped at once.
As Kevin stepped free of the enormous hands, the great creature bobbed its neckless head and made what could only be a smile. “Well met once more, noble Tomalia. Did I not say, when you returned to Mistral Bog–”
“Snatcher!” Zephyr cried. “Well, good Lurk, I could hardly knock on a doorpost and ask directions in your dismal domain, could I?”
Kevin grinned. “He’s called a Lurk? How … appropriate. A lurking Lurk.”
But before the Lurk could respond, Alliathiune planted herself before him, plastered in mud and slime and rotting bits of re
ed stalks, and told him exactly what she thought of his placing them all in danger. Kevin shivered and tried to look contrite, while attempting to comb the plant’s gooey digestive juices out of his ears and hair. Zephyr, chortling nearby, was not helping matters. He started to help Kevin with his magic, but somehow only succeeded in transferring a bucketful of slime from Kevin onto Alliathiune’s shoulder.
“You clumsy oaf!” she slapped his withers. “Watch where you’re throwing all that green snot.”
Zephyr let loose a long whinny of helpless laughter. “You look–we all look–utterly ridiculous!” Kevin started to chuckle fitfully too.
Alliathiune flicked her bedraggled hair back from her face. “No thanks to the good outlander! Mistral Bog is not some walk in a pretty Unicorn park.”
“Now, good Dryad, keep your hair on. It turned out alright.”
“Humph! Babysitting is hardly part of the agreement, good Zephyr. People need to pull their weight around here. And by the Hills, will you stop staring at me like that!” She folded her arms self-consciously across her chest. “It gives me the creeps!”
“You’ve a little eel hanging from your … uh, there,” muttered Kevin, pointing. An X’gäthi warrior immediately plucked the creature from her hair and popped it in his mouth with evident relish.
Zephyr broke in, “Noble Lurk, we must thank you for your aid. Your courage is a credit to your kind.”
His shoulders hunched together like two mountain peaks huddling behind his neck. Kevin thought the colossal Lurk was quite the ugliest creature he had ever seen, but was that his fault? And he must be ten feet tall if he was an inch!
“I make humble apologies if the manner of my sudden appearance should have disadvantaged your powers of recollection, nobles all,” rumbled the creature. “I am the Lurk common-named Snatcher. The Peace of the Mothering Forest–”
Alliathiune interrupted, “You found our mighty muddy wizard! Thank you. Sorry, Peace also to you, good Snatcher. It has been too long.”
The Lurk tried a bow, which was rather tricky for a creature with no neck and apparently no waist either. “Indeed, it is I, escorting you through the swamp.”
“We were doing just fine until someone stuck his nose where it doesn’t belong!”
Towering over the Dryad, the Lurk grinned hideously. “Good Allämiuna, had I not protected you and your companions, you would have perished thrice during this past lighttime, which is barely half-old.”
“Thrice? Surely you jest.”
“Truly, good Dryad, you twice barely escaped the sting of the oldwort creeper, which is deadly to most creatures, and once would have stumbled upon a nest of lesser dark flatworms, had I not first exterminated it. Your X’gäthi are efficient, but not native to Mistral Bog.”
“Once more, good Lurk, we are indebted to you.”
“It is far too trivial a matter for such weighty talk,” he replied. “So, has the good outlander proved useful thus far?”
Kevin scowled. “Useful?” he muttered. It peeved him that this Snatcher seemed to know all about him–he, a creature of Mistral Bog, hardly the cosmopolitan hub of the Seventy-Seven Hills. Ah, it was Snatcher who had rescued him. Zephyr had not told him this!
Zephyr proceeded to fill Snatcher in on what had transpired in Thaharria-brin-Tomal, and the nature of their journey to Elliadora’s Well.
“Useful indeed,” he commented at the end of this. “So then, the Dark One has scented your trail at last. That is not unexpected, given the nature of recent intelligence we have received and the reported activity of his many agents these last lighttimes.” And his great eyes shrewdly appraised them all.
The Unicorn audibly caught his breath at this mention of the Dark One.
“These few,” Alliathiune put in, “are aware of our alliance, good Lurk. If they were not, they are now! You may address them as freely as you are able.”
“Very well. Hearken to my words.” The X’gäthi shuffled closer to the mountainous Lurk, but Kevin noticed that their hands hovered near their weapons. He himself did not dare approach such a huge creature–why, one misstep and he’d be squashed like a bug! That said, Mistral Bog was full of them. He slapped his neck. Especially the sort with bites disproportionate to their size. Drat it all, he had enough trouble with persistent spots without the red lumps of insect bites added to the collection!
“We have recently learned of an apprentice to the Dark One,” began the Lurk, causing Zephyr to exhale a tiny whinny of dread. “In the seasons when last the Dark One strode the Seventy-Seven Hills, good outlander–it is for your benefit that I recount this history–it was as though the pains of childbirth had gripped all of Driadorn. Race rose against race and tribe against tribe. Many and bloody were the battles fought to restore peace beneath these leafy boughs, for the Dark Wizard’s ambitions knew no checks or bounds. He openly declared the objective of subjugating all races to his tyranny, following which he would overmaster the very Forest itself and claim that most ancient and puissant magic for his own. I fail to adequately describe to you, noble creatures, the horror and desperation of those evil lighttimes, the bonds that were sundered between the peoples of Driadorn, how betrayal was heaped upon betrayal, how exploits of the greatest heroism and follies of grandiose desperation were pursued by greedy rulers, the many perfidious plots and acts of the basest treachery, and the apparently unstoppable march of the Dark Wizard’s armies! How nearly he succeeded–for divided, the races fell one by one. Old alliances failed. Friends deserted each other at critical times.”
Zephyr nickered softly, “The scars remain.”
Snatcher nodded gravely. “The sacrifice of that most noble of Unicorns, Whimstar, will always be spoken with honour and respect when those days are remembered. It was she who, when all seemed lost, wrought the trap that brought the Dark One within reach of her horn, for at the arrogant zenith of his power he believed that nothing was impossible, that not even the unique power of a Unicorn’s magic could withstand him. No creature, save a Unicorn, by my reckoning, comprehends what exactly Whimstar did to Ozark the Dark, but somehow in the yielding of her own life she was able to destroy him–and with the destruction of the Dark Wizard, his armies were routed and scattered to all corners of the Forest.”
Kevin nodded. “I had a Unicorn tutor who taught me the rudiments. But you tell it better than he, Snatcher.”
“Excellent!” The Lurk turned now to Alliathiune and Zephyr. “We Lurks sent word to the Dryads of the assembling of an army of Men in the north–bands of strange, armoured Men, bearing weapons and methods of war foreign to the Hills. Our scouts described a metal-armoured beast breathing fire and other wonders their small minds are unable to grasp. Even as we speak, their envoys parley with the Fauns and the detritus of their tunnelling to the Trolls reaches mountainous proportions. Need I remind you of the Trollish lust for killing and their insatiable appetites for power and destruction? Though they command the vast underground realms, to the detriment of the other subterranean races, the Trolls have always yearned to return to the world of light, to the land of the Seven Rivers, to claim what they believe is their birthright.”
“We hadn’t received these ill tidings,” said Alliathiune, in a small voice that clearly communicated her alarm.
“Good Dryad, I had hoped you would receive this intelligence during your sojourn at Thaharria-brin-Tomal. Furthermore, we have learned of an apprentice, a mysterious newcomer to the Forest who does not yet appear to be allied with these armoured Men from the north–but it can only be a matter of time. There are rumours of wizardly doings deep in the Old Forest, nothing more substantial than whisperings and fragments, I fear, but the omens of anyukkê–in your tongue, the ‘movements-of-power’–are dire, for the Forest senses those who perform works of wicked magic within her leafy halls. We holders of the ancient knowledge are gravely troubled. The taint of the Blight now reaches our sluggish waters. Even the Lurks are restless.”
Good this and noble that, Kevin thought, loo
king between the strange creatures which surrounded him. Was it mere politeness? Or did Alliathiune trust the Lurk as instinctively as he did? There was a quality in his voice and manner, he felt, something truly honourable, not just a mere form of words.
“We had sensed a shadow rising against Driadorn, good Lurk,” Alliathiune whispered after a long silence, “but you have painted a fuller picture. Has our lack of belief in a Dark Apprentice impaired our service to the Forest? Have we failed before it is begun?”
“This sinister Blight is merely a foreshadowing, noble Dryad,” agreed the Lurk. “But while creatures who love the Mother Forest yet live and breathe, there is hope.”
Thigh-deep in viscid swamp water, the Dryad bowed to the Lurk.
Zephyr said, “We would not be mired in the midst of Mistral Bog, good Dryad, were it not for love of the Forest. I do not see many other Dryads similarly engaged in defeating this evil.”
“Perhaps so–but I still feel foolish.”
“As do I. Blind, and foolish. Did I not yester morn argue that the Black Wolves’ attack was random and unpremeditated?”
“If anyone is foolish around here, it is I,” Kevin piped up. “You two at least foresaw Driadorn’s need. I kept trying to fight you off–and today I put all your lives in danger. Snatcher, with every part of me not currently digesting in that plant over there right now, I thank you.”
A second time, a great bellow shook Mistral Bog, causing a flotilla of tall, wading water birds called tothiki herons to launch into ponderous, honking flight. But this bellow was all laughter.
“Good Lurk,” said Alliathiune, when she could hear herself speak again, “does it strike you that a Council of War is called for?”
“Mylliandawn would never countenance a Council of War–with my apologies, noble Lurk–on such flimsy evidence and rumours of armies assembling,” Zephyr argued. “But surely a Council represents the only means of gaining widespread co-operation between the creatures?”
