by Marc Secchia
Slowly, he leaned forward and touched his forehead to the cool stone. What had he expected? Magic? A low, disgusted chuckle warbled from the depths of his throat. No, he reminded himself, he was just a useless lump of outlander baggage who needed a dozen X’gäthi warriors to wipe his backside. Alliathiune would surely die. He stiff-armed himself away. All that bothering about nothing. He was no wizard.
“Hold still!” Zephyr shrilled.
“Pardon?”
In his haste the Unicorn trod on the Faun’s ankle. He grunted in pain. “Mind your hooves.”
“Just–stand there! Stand still! Do whatever you were doing!”
Kevin scratched his chin and muttered, “Listen, old man, you’re making no sense whatsoever.” He adjusted his cloak and hung his head. “Come on, Zephyr. I feel like enough of a failure already.”
But Zephyr prodded him with his muzzle. “Go back. What were you doing? You were standing there by the wall. Were you touching it?” Kevin sighed like a man three times his age. “Humour me, good Kevin. I’m already made a fool, why not join me?”
He could not suppress a chuckle. “Your forced entry that backfired on you?”
“Indeed.” Zephyr bared his teeth in a Unicorn smile. A blast of fire had been reflected somehow, sending him flying. “Thankfully, my magic protected me from any worse than skidding across those brambles on my haunches. Even wizards of the fourth rank have no proof against their own foolishness and impatience.”
“I don’t consider you foolish, good Zephyr.”
“Very well. Now, do whatever you were just doing.”
He leaned against the tower. “This?”
“No, something’s wrong. Exactly what you were doing before.”
Kevin reluctantly inserted his hand through the Key-Ring, hidden in his pocket. “How’s this?”
Zephyr clucked impatiently. “Put your head against the tower.”
“I feel ridiculous.”
“Hold still–excellent. Hold everything. Noble Snatcher, get your mangy hide over here and tell me what you see.”
The Lurk made a sound like the grating of a dungeon door. “Still got a thorn stuck up your rear, good Zephyr?” Kevin shifted uneasily. At Zephyr’s impatient hiss, however, he touched his head to the cool marble once more. This was more than ridiculous, it was demeaning–but he would have put up with a thousand years of demeaning for the chance of seeing Alliathiune well again. Snatcher’s shadow loomed over him. “Unless my sight deceives me, good Unicorn,” he growled, rubbing his eyes, “I see a prismatic shield with a hole in it. I didn’t think that was possible. Good Kevin, lift your head for a moment.”
Zephyr reared in excitement, slashing the air with his hooves. “Incredible!”
“Now put your hand against the wall.” The Lurk prodded Kevin with his forefinger.
“Ouch–gently! That thing’s like a stick!”
Snatcher ignored him. “You, good Human, are a genius.”
“What’s so great about blocking–?”
“Hold still!” Zephyr neighed. “By the holy Well itself, good outlander, I don’t know how you do it!” He explained, prancing about, “A prismatic shield can be raised only by seven powerful wizards acting in concert, and is so named because it blocks all possible kinds of magic. It shifts and misdirects magic like a prism. Once raised, it requires a master with the right keyword or phrase, or runes, or magical symbols, to reopen it. It cannot–should not–be broken down by any external force. How do you do that?”
“Do what–like this?” Kevin laid his head against the stone ore. Two gasps confirmed that he had breached the shield once more. The frightening thing was, this time he was not even touching the Key-Ring. He felt rattled. “And if I spread my arms?”
“I’ll be hornswoggled!”
Snatcher uttered something untranslatable in Lurkish beneath his breath. His huge paw buffeted Kevin’s shoulder. “Well done, noble Wizard. Why did you not come forward before? You have in one breath made more progress than three of us have all afternoon. A step to your left, if you please?”
“As our Mother Forest lives and breathes!” cried the Unicorn. “A door! Yahhnïaa Tomalia aflïa! We’ve found the door! Is it locked? Quickly, and hold still, good outlander. Can you raise your arms a little? Haste, good Snatcher, bring him something to stand on.”
Shortly, Kevin was installed upon a small boulder, leaning his head against the lintel of a Human-sized door in the side of the tower. As long as he kept his arms raised, he could open a gap in the magical shield, which shimmered in a million colours along his arms and shoulders with a faint prickling like the beginnings of a patch of eczema. Was it not like that old Bible story he had once read? As long as their leader kept his arms upraised, the Israelites prevailed against their enemies, but when they dropped, the battle went against them. Of course that was just a legend. But he too, like that ancient prophet, soon had to have assistance to keep his arms raised–in his case two X’gäthi warriors. He was about to complain, when Zephyr abruptly announced that he had disabled the traps set into the door and they could now enter safely. Snatcher lifted his great foot and nudged it open, to a protesting groan of hinges that had not moved in a thousand seasons or more. There was a whiff of stale air–and lights came on within.
* * * *
Zephyr lifted his red-rimmed eyes from the parchment he had been studying and crowed, “At last.”
Almost three lighttimes had passed since finding the entrance to Shilliabär Tower. With the unique magic of his horn, Zephyr had neutralised the magical guards lurking within, and thereafter swept through the great library in a desperate, flustered rush. There was no time to properly examine the thousands of scrolls and manuscripts lining the walls and shelves, no opportunity to exclaim over the treasures of a thousand years of wizardry, and no need to examine the hidden sub-chambers that housed the most dangerous texts and artefacts. Magic prickled around him at every step. Every moment that passed put Alliathiune in greater danger than before. What he would not have given for a lifetime’s study here, he muttered. But the morrow’s dawn would be Alliathiune’s last, if they did not move quickly.
Zephyr’s exhausted exclamation brought the others to their feet at once. “Attend us, you X’gäthi!” he cried. “Good Lurk, bring the Dryad. We must immerse her in the pool called ‘Shiär-Lazûr’, which lies at the northern edge of this square. In its healing waters, with the incantations described here, she shall be restored. It surely took too long to find this simple information.”
Kevin trotted after them with quiet anxiety clutching his heart–lighttime by lighttime, desperation had swollen in his breast as the deadline approached and no progress was forthcoming. But now his hope–could he hope? He scrambled over the jumbled rocks and peered ahead. Surely the pool would have been ruined after so many years? Surely the sixth lighttime approached. Tomorrow she would perish.
Scrambling atop a pile of boulders, he groaned aloud at what he saw.
“Courage, good Kevin! Courage, denizens of the Forest!” The Lurk’s paw steadied him, as the companions surveyed the ruin with cries of dismay. “This is a straightforward matter for a Lurk of Mistral Bog.”
The pool was dry, and filled with the detritus of centuries. Once, seven marble columns had surrounded it, but these had collapsed into the pool, crumbling the edges and filling the centre with rubble. The water had drained away untold years before. Bushes and briars had sprung up between the stones, further entangling the whole mess, which he estimated was some thirty feet long, twenty wide, and five feet deep. Kevin could see no conceivable way of repairing it, but his companions evidently could. While three X’gäthi prowled their surrounds to keep the Glothums–or at least, their monstrous descendants–at bay, everyone else leaped to work with a will. Zephyr began to powder rocks with the touch of his horn, until Snatcher asked him to throw up a shield as he had previously, for the work might continue all darktime. The Faun and the X’gäthi ripped up bushes and removed the sma
ller lumps of rubble, while the Lurk flexed his muscles to shift the larger chunks. Kevin made himself useful by preparing a pot of hot, sweet skue to fuel their efforts.
By last light, their unstinting labours combined with the Lurk’s herculean strength and stamina had produced noticeable results. By midnight, which Zephyr called ‘mid-darktime’ and Snatcher ‘star-song’, they had reached the bottom of the pool in places and were beginning to wonder where the water had once flowed from. Two turns before dawn, they had cleared enough of the rubble and Kevin collapsed while attempting to heft a stone the size of his head out of the pool. Zephyr fussed over him while the Lurk continued to crawl around the bottom of the basin, probing with his Lurk magic for a spring, or a flow of some kind.
Nearly a turn passed before Snatcher stopped. “It is here. Stand back, everyone.” And he squatted, placing his palms flat on the ground.
Kevin shifted onto his side to watch. The Lurk’s eyes glowed with an opalescent light, and his great frame flexed as though willing the very earth to move. Indeed, through the ground, he felt something groan and shift with slow reluctance like the first shifting of a landmass from its primal seat. The Lurk struggled mightily to turn those geological forces to his advantage. Kevin could hear his teeth grinding together. A bloodlike sweat welled up on the Lurk’s back and shoulders. And then it happened–first a trickle, then a gurgle, a spluttering of water beneath the Lurk’s haunches. Zephyr and Akê-Akê cheered hoarsely.
Snatcher stood upright with a creaking of stiff joints. He made an impatient gesture. “That was the easy part.”
“Splendidly done, good Lurk!” cried Zephyr. “Now we only need wait until there is water sufficient to immerse the Dryad.”
“It’s draining away,” Akê-Akê pointed out. “Look, into that crack.”
“I was afraid of that,” Snatcher sighed tiredly. “Very well. Would you kindly bring me a supply of rubble?”
Four X’gäthi and a Faun sprang to his bidding. Even Zephyr assisted, using his telekinesis to sweep dust and pebbles into Snatcher’s reach, once he realised what was happening. The Lurk filled the cracks with whatever materials he could gather, and then ran his hands over them in a smoothing gesture. The basso rumble of his voice spoke several syllables over and over again–and where his hands passed, the broken stones and dirt began to melt and run together like hot lava. Stopping the cracks. Repairing the broken stonework. Restoring what remained of the tiling to its former beauty. With the patience characteristic of his kind, the Lurk moved calmly around the base of the basin on hands and knees, until the water no longer soaked away but began to pool and spread out, and for the first time in untold centuries, the pool of Shiär-Lazûr began to fill with its healing waters.
The Lurk pressed on until first light, when the water in the deepest part was beginning to slosh around his knees and even at the edges, at the root-cracked walls, there was sufficient to cover his flat toes. By then, utter exhaustion was evident in the droop of his shoulders and the flatness of his voice as he called for Alliathiune to be brought down–he could not even pull himself out of the pool.
Kevin wondered if the muddy brown waters would do anything at all. One might catch something rather than be healed in such a murky pond. The Lurk waded in, cradling the ghastly green bundle in his great arms as he moved to the deepest part. Without ceremony, he dunked the comatose Dryad beneath the water and glanced up at Zephyr.
“Right.” The Unicorn cleared his throat, traced several symbols in the air with his horn, and began to read from a parchment hovering in the air before him. His clear voice rang above their company, which stood about the pool with their heads bowed in funereal stillness.
Kevin resisted an urge to cover his eyes. So much depended upon his companions! His throat was stopped up with anguish. Her imminent death at his hands had been a constant torment to him, food and grist to his rampaging inner demons, denying him a peaceful darktime rest. What if it didn’t work? What if she died?
He saw a sudden ripple beneath the water. Snatcher’s eyes widened in surprise. A bubble popped to the surface, and another, and a sudden belch of gas made him splutter and wipe his face. Like a seal broaching the ocean’s surface, so Alliathiune’s head arose from the still pool and she surged upright with one lithe flexion of her thighs, gasping from the chill, standing waist-deep and glistening by the gleam of dawn’s first blush. Her long hair was slicked down her back to her waist, and as she wiped the water from her eyes, the Dryadic patterning on her arms and hands rippled one final time before settling.
She was nude, and never more beautiful to behold.
Alliathiune braced her fists on her hips. “Well then,” she said, softly and clearly, as though she had not just supped at the very table of Shäyol, “who dunked me?”
Then her eyes widened as she realised she was wearing not a stitch of clothing. With a horrified shriek, the Dryad covered herself and sank to her neck in the water, leaving only her accusing eyes glaring up at the poolside company.
“You males!” she yelled, her voice echoing through the ruins of ancient Shilliabär. “You could at least have warned me before I exposed myself for the world to see! Who’s responsible for this? Zephyr? Who gave me this dousing? You tell me right now, or I swear I’ll … I’ll …”
Yes, Alliathiune was back.
To his utter mortification, Kevin gulped and began to weep aloud.
Chapter 13: Elliadora’s Well
The company rested only until noon before pressing on. By unanimous consent, they wanted to leave the deadly Glothums far, far behind. Zephyr closed up Shilliabär’s tower before they left.
“We must return for these Glothums,” the Unicorn said. “One lighttime.”
The trail became easier to navigate after Shilliabär but no less dangerous, filled now with Glothums and other nameless creatures. But after Alliathiune and Zephyr combined their magic to create a spell of concealment upon the company, the going became easier and Kevin needed to worry mostly about placing one foot in front of the next. He began to feel the altitude, but despite his tiredness, found himself enjoying the hike. He had never felt better. Perhaps the Forest was agreeable to Humankind, he mused. Or perhaps it was because a certain Dryad was still with them? Even if their intimate conversation had not been repeated, he enjoyed a newfound respect and found Alliathiune treating him more and more as an equal.
Toward evening they reached the Barlindran River, and camped on its fern-fringed bank. The Lurk went fishing, but soon returned with a handful of rotting fish. “Little still lives, up here,” he growled. “This Blight has teeth.”
For the better part of a lighttime following, the company wended their way upriver between rugged hills to either side, following a narrow game trail trodden over muddy soil and slippery boulders. Thick redberry bushes clustered close to the water, whilst the hillsides were dominated by massive, gnarled kalar and oak trees, alternating with stands of the darker lowanstock and silvery beech trees of a ‘velvet bark’ variety Zephyr pointed out to Kevin, who saw no difference whatsoever but nodded sagely anyway. Mosses and blotchy lichens crowded the ancient tree trunks and boulders, heightening the appearance of venerable age, but there was no decay here, save the Blight. The river narrowed latterly into a shadowy ravine, cool enough for cloaks and warm skue mid-afternoon.
Kevin’s whole body ached, and it did not help that his companions were indefatigable–indeed, they pressed on ever more eagerly as the lighttime hours passed by and their anticipated arrival at Elliadora’s Well grew closer. But when he began to hobble from a burst and chafing blister on his heel, Zephyr reluctantly called a halt. They cast about for a likely campsite.
Kevin flopped down on a large patch of moss and at Alliathiune’s peremptory command, eased off his boots. “Goodness gracious,” he groaned as she spread salve on the offending raw skin, “you’ve no idea how good that feels.”
The Dryad gave him a sidelong glance. “What did I tell good Snatcher about speaking
up sooner about his ailments?”
“You were so eager to reach the Well,” he said, seeking by a show of innocence to deflect her sharp tongue. “I didn’t want to slow anyone down.”
“Zephyr’s gone to take a look ahead,” she replied gently. “Please, noble outlander–this kind of abrasion can easily become infected. You should be more careful.”
“At least it isn’t an allergy! Have I escaped your wrath so lightly?”
“My strength recovers apace since Shilliabär. I’m too weary to be cross with anyone.”
“You, good Alliathiune?”
“But if you continue to bait me …” Clasping her knees with her arms, the Dryad stared down over the winding gorge they had climbed to the tangled mass of the Old Forest beyond. Despite Indomalion breaking through the westerly clouds to bathe the Forest from horizon to horizon with glorious copper sunshine, it still seemed mysterious and alien to Kevin.
Alliathiune’s sigh was like an emotional exclamation point. “Good Kevin, what think you of our Forest?”
He half-turned toward her upon his elbow, seeking to penetrate the motives behind her question, and she looked down at him with a pensive smile. The sunlight highlighted the flawless silvery-green hue of her skin, and the variegated beryls, emeralds, and grass-greens of her long, tumbling tresses. Her hazel eyes sparkled with some unreadable sentiment. He recalled her rising nude from the pool of Shiär-Lazûr, and felt detestable because of his feelings then and now.
He sighed and looked out over the Forest. “Where do I start? Its beauties? Its wondrous creatures, powers, and magic?”
“Have you any further thoughts on this Blight?”
