by Marc Secchia
“Kevin.”
“Yeah? I’ll shake on that.” Snake had a cold hand, but his grasp was steely. He looked Kevin up and down. “That’s a mighty unusual name, Kevin. Which part of Driadorn do you call home?”
“Uh–Thaharria-brin-Tomal, I suppose.”
“Ah, you must work for the one-horns. Proud and touchy lot. Can’t say as I like their airs and graces much, myself.”
“Yes, I suppose they can be–”
“But what an honour to come to Elliadora’s Well, eh, good Kevin? You must be one of the few Humans about this lighttime. We Humans should stick together.”
“Speak for yourself,” grunted Braddock, letting the entire contents of the flagon slide down his throat in one long gulp. “I’ll have another!”
“Big drinkers, those Wolverines,” Snake advised. “Don’t ever get yourself into a drinking contest with one of them.” Kevin blinked uncertainly. “What you drinking, anyways?”
“Wine. Ish very good.”
“Wine?” scoffed Braddock. “Pigswill! Men don’t drink wine–do they, Snake? No, real men drink Berman’s Blast or green kale. Now’s there’s a drink that’ll curl your chest hairs!”
“You’ll have one, Snake?”
“You’re a wicked son of a lamka rat, Braddock! Yes, I will at that.”
“Kevin?”
“Sure you will!” roared the Wolverine, waving to one of the Honeybears serving at the tables. “At least one–you ever tried it before? No? Can’t say you’ve lived until you’ve tried a green kale, my friend. It’s smoother than a Dryad’s backside, sweeter than honey, and bites the living bedathar out of you.”
“What’s a ‘bedathar’?” Kevin inquired, as his alcohol-pickled mind slowly ruminated over the comment about Dryads’ backsides.
“A Wolverine word you shouldn’t repeat in polite company,” said Snake, with an ugly leer across the table that showed off all the black bits between his teeth. “So, you came through the Portal with the rest of the one-horns, eh? That was quite an experience, if I say so myself.”
“No, actually I didn’t.”
Snake’s arm froze halfway to his mouth. “You don’t say. You aren’t the outlander everyone’s talking about, are you?”
“Well, I don’t know about–”
“Say, Braddock!” Snake cried, “Listen up for a minute, will you? This is the outlander that came all the way here with those X’gäthi and the Unicorn–what’s his name?”
“Zephyr,” Kevin supplied eagerly.
“Zephyr, that’s right. So you came with Zephyr?”
“Yesh, thanksh, Braddosh.”
“No sweat,” growled the Wolverine. “By my oath, I had no idea we were in such important company. Why didn’t you tell me, Snake? I wouldn’t be cussing my tongue dry with Dryad’s whatsits and all if I knew who we were sitting with!”
“That must have been some journey, eh, outlander?” said Snake, letting some green kale slide down his throat. “Ah, burn me all the way, baby!” He smacked his lips, giving Kevin a whiff of something like a cross between aniseed and hot tar. “I’ll bet you have a few tales from the Old Forest. Dangerous out there, wouldn’t you say?”
His words gave Kevin the opening he had been waiting for–the opportunity to impress these strangers with the tale of how they had braved the perils of the notorious Old Forest and fought their way to Elliadora’s Well. Before long, he had gathered an audience and was well into the swing of the telling–aided by Braddock’s occasional hint at the flagon of green kale, which was even more potent than Snatcher’s toad oil. It fairly lifted one’s head off one’s shoulders and set it back a different way!
Kevin never suspected he was being pumped for information by two masters of the art. The occasional hint here and interjection there had him spilling the beans on Akê-Akê, then Snatcher’s involvement, and even his own origins. A second green kale followed the first. With all that alcohol swimming around in his stomach, he bragged and blabbed and fibbed with a vengeance. After a turn and a half of the glass, his head was lolling against Braddock’s shoulder and he was slurring his way through a highly improbable account of their adventures in ancient Shilliabär.
“What a story!” Snake exclaimed.
“That scarab demon sounds evil!” agreed Braddock, nudging Kevin’s hand away from his quest for a flagon. “So you saved the Dryad, eh–what did you say her name was, again?”
“Alliath … th … oone!” Kevin mumbled, trying several times before sticking with, “’Thooney! S’right. ’Thooney.” If he said it firmly enough, it sounded right.
“The Dryad?”
“Sh’ all right–’Thooney.”
Braddock clapped him on the back, halting an incipient slide. Kevin, at this stage, was fighting a losing battle with his body’s desire to reach the horizontal plane. “So what was her part in all this, good outlander?”
“Thooney. Shweet girl. Sh’got green hair.”
“Really?” Snake rolled his eyes at Braddock. “So what was her part?”
“Sh’all right. Shlapped me in the fashe, one time. I’m thirshty.”
“What do you think of her?”
“Who?”
“Alliathiune.”
“’Thooney?”
“Yeah, that’s right–what did she do?”
Kevin hiccoughed and stared blearily across at the pavilion. There was a group of creatures issuing from it. The Council must have ended. “’Thooney.”
“Yeah,” growled Snake, starting to lose his cool. “Tell us about Alliathiune.”
“What? I’m thirshty, I shed!” Kevin blearily noticed his audience melting away. “Oi, come back, you.”
Braddock insisted, “Tell us about–”
“’Thooney?”
“Yes! The Seer, that’s the one!”
“Breasht … shh,” Kevin mumbled, still trying to reach for the flagon, but the Wolverine’s thick arm kept getting in the way. “She ish … ishn’t fat.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Big … uh, I feel shick.”
“Uh-oh. Snake …”
The music faltered and died. The party from the pavilion was not ten yards away, in a perfect position to see and hear everything when Kevin staggered to his feet to deliver his immortal line.
“Lisshen!” he cried to the world at large, at full drunken volume. “’Thooney ishnt fat–she ish gorgeosh! She hash big breashtsh!”
And he saluted her with an empty flagon.
* * * *
There was a silence like the calm before an earthquake.
The approaching party included a fair cross-section of the most influential creatures of Driadorn. At their forefront was Mylliandawn of the Unicorns, to her right the Head Witch of Gnarlhand Coven and a hunchbacked Druid called Amadorn, and at her left hand was Alliathiune the Dryad; they were followed by the Dryad Queen, the Chief Rodent, and the great Eagle Swiftwing of Dawn; then to the rear came the Jasper Cat Ss’rrr’than’grrr-ar, nicknamed Blink for his habit of appearing directly behind people and scaring the living daylights out of them, various Wyverns, the Tusk of all Elephants, the Bear representative, and the venerable Grand Owl Two Hoots himself.
Every last vestige of colour drained from Alliathiune’s face. In the hush, Kevin sniggered lewdly and then pitched backward over the bench. As he fell, he gashed his head open on the edge of a chair.
Kevin began to empty his stomach with violent effect.
The nobles and rulers were trapped in frozen tableaux when there came a flash, as dazzling as a bolt of lightning, by the great trees at the far end of the Sacred Grove, and a booming concussion of sound that staggered everyone. Shrieks of dismay echoed around the peaceful vale. With one accord, the rulers and creatures of Driadorn whirled.
Dimly, Kevin beheld a majestic figure striding up from the Elliarana trees, tall and broad-shouldered, wreathed in a flowing cloak of midnight black, with a seam of silver symbols picked out around the hem and hood of his
wizardly attire. He held in his right hand a black metal staff like a stylised serpent, and from its mouth issued flames as red as blood, the tongues of fire writhing and licking up his right arm as though eerily alive yet without burning his flesh. His features were hidden behind a mask of obsidian. And when he spoke, it was in tones that boomed and crashed around the Sacred Grove.
“Greetings, pitiful creatures!” he boomed. “I am the Dark Apprentice, disciple of Ozark, styled the Dark by those he conquered in seasons past!”
Zephyr gasped an involuntary whinny of dread. Several of the Dryads fainted.
Kevin fumbled for the flask at his belt. Snatcher had dropped his toad oil earlier.
“I have come that you might have fair warning, and a foretaste of the wrath to come!” The Dark Apprentice swept his arm to include all present, making his cloak billow behind him like a black wave. “I declare to you this lighttime that a new star is risen! I am the son of the dawn! All the dark powers of mayhem and destruction that ever were claimed by Ozark the Dark, these and more now fill my wizard’s armoury. I am Kidräl-Lukan, your new master! They call me Drakûr Mägil, the Great Dragon, lord of the ancient ones and master of the seven scrolls of wizardry. Flee, you unfortunate ones. Flee back to your homes and hollows and dens! For the Trolls of the pit and the Men of the north are rising, and soon the Seventy-Seven Hills and all Driadorn will face the sword of the avenger. Flee, you luckless, childless rabble!”
And he mocked them with peals of maniacal laughter. “How your darkest visions have unfolded, creatures of the Forest! You have tested and approved my handiwork, for already the Blight I wrought strikes to the heart of Elliadora’s Well. Soon the iron-shod heel of my armies will crush your insignificant resistance, and enslave your kindred and offspring for time and eternity. I’ll grind you into the dust. I’ll rule over you! The Dark Apprentice will rule every living, breathing creature from the Old Forest to the Great Sea. And you’ll rue the day that you were whelped in pain and sorrow.”
Snake, who was trying to hide under the same table as Kevin, kicked him in the head to make more room. Kevin fumbled the flask of toad oil. Jiminy cricket, he felt sick!
“Now, enough foolishness and petty bickering! I declare your petty council ended!”
So saying, the Dark Apprentice raised his burning staff and unleashed a titanic fireball at the huge central pavilion which had been erected to house the Council of War. If he had intended to impress, his entrance and dramatic speech would have been sufficient. But the Dark Apprentice was not content. His wizard’s fire scorched through the still afternoon with a hiss of insatiable hunger, and as the pavilion exploded into flame, it tore wholly loose from its supports and flopped over on its side, trapping a group of Unicorns beneath the burning canvas. Next, he turned his attention to the small stage that seated the musicians, spewing a stream of flames from his staff that engulfed the creatures there and set them ablaze.
Zephyr, Amadorn, and several others belatedly counterattacked, but they had been caught unprepared and their combined magic fizzled against the wizard’s fire. The Dark Apprentice guffawed as he swatted their attacks away, as if they were no more than a swarm of buzzing grimflies. Amadorn was the quickest to recover, invoking by the touch of a secret sigil on the shaft of his staff a bolt from the blue heavens that rent a twenty-foot crater beneath the dark wizard’s pointed slippers. But when the cloud of dirt had rained back to earth again, he stood unmarked and unharmed upon the edge of that steaming ruin. A sharp tang of ozone filled the air.
“Your puny attacks can never defeat the invincible Dark Apprentice!” he roared, and the amplified, magically enhanced power of his voice set the tables a-tumble, wrecked the bar area, and knocked many of the weaker creatures right off their feet. “Now taste the true measure of my might!”
As he strode forward, the Dark Apprentice’s highly polished black boots set the turf ablaze where he trod. He brandished his staff like a flame-thrower, setting two Bears alight and sweeping his fire towards Alliathiune and Zephyr, but the Dryad gave a cry and plunged her hands into the earth. The ground groaned and cracked and bucked before them, rising as a ridge to shield them momentarily from his immense power. The creatures behind scattered with cries of terror and dismay, seeking to hide themselves, to pull the ground over their heads, to take flight–anything to escape the reach of the Dark Wizard’s assault. Only Mylliandawn chose to press the attack. She hurdled the barricade Alliathiune had raised to unleash the full power of her horn upon Ozark’s disciple.
There was a crackle of fire and an angry growl from the other side of the ridge, followed by the sound of metal striking flesh and an awful hush.
“Quick, good Zephyr,” Alliathiune called, “let us raise a shield together. Noble Amadorn, will you add your Druidic powers?”
“At once!” said he, touching his staff dextrously.
A silvery magic initiated by the Unicorn began to glimmer in the air between them, settling over the venerable Two Hoots, Swiftwing of Dawn, and the Wyvern. The Witch and the Jasper Cat too added their own peculiar brands of magic to the shield, which was swiftly bolstered by a group of junior Unicorns and even more swiftly joined by the cowardly Chief Rodent, whose instinct for self-preservation drew a snicker of disapproval from the tall, thin Witch. Like a lodestone, the shield drew other creatures nearby to its assumed safe haven.
Beneath the table, Kevin unstoppered the gourd and took a swig, but he spilled most of it down his shirt front. He groaned and dropped his head to the grass, watching proceedings from beside the bench as the toad oil burned briefly within him.
“Who is this apprentice?” cawed Swiftwing, smoothing his ruffled feathers with a flick of his great pinions. He was an Eagle of the faraway Tramalian Eyrie, and stood as tall as a man.
“Such power he wields!” spat the Jasper Cat, his emerald tail lashing back and forth in anger and fright. “Is he one of your colleagues, good Zephyr?”
“Not one of my acquaintance!”
There came a roar of flame from beyond the ridge. With a great groaning and creaking, one of the Elliarana began to topple–slowly, majestically–and the Dryads shuddered and wailed. The tree’s demise seemed endless, crashing in slow motion upon the meadow and shaking every creature there with the force of its fall.
“The Sacred Grove burns!” Alliathiune shrieked, as if the smouldering of the ancient Elliarana was a brand pressing into her own flesh.
“Do not hasten to your death!” growled Amadorn, seeking with a crooked limb to restrain her.
The Dryad lashed out at him, blindly, her whole being taken up with the smouldering trees down there in the Grove. But Zephyr quickly stepped between them, heading off the Dryad, and righted the crippled Druid with his telekinesis.
“Peace, good Dryad!”
The Druid gave a sad little smile, and shook his shaggy mane. The fall had hurt him, that much was plain to see, but he braced himself upright upon his staff with a conciliating smile.
The booming voice shocked them all. “Peace? What peace shall I leave you?”
“The Dark Wizard!” The Chief Rodent gave a despairing wail and tried to squeeze beneath a table, which was too low to accommodate his quivering bulk. His posterior wriggled helplessly in the air.
The black figure had levitated up upon the ridge that Alliathiune had raised, employing it as a platform in order to showcase his superiority.
“Hold fast!” Zephyr said grimly, touching horns with one of the young Unicorns. “Strength to you, noble Scillianstar!”
“I shall not yield,” he returned bravely.
The Dark Apprentice sneered at him. “You shall not yield? You will bow before me ere the turn-glass yields its sand! Behold your erstwhile ruler, the ignoble Mylliandawn!”
He tossed down before them the head of Mylliandawn, which tumbled down the slope and came to rest very near Scillianstar’s hooves. Entombed in some clear, plastic substance, with an expression of unspeakable horror making her eyes bulge gro
tesquely from her skull, was the head and horn of Mylliandawn, sheared off at the neck as by a gigantic razor. Scillianstar gagged and bolted, passing beyond the ambit of their protective shield.
“No!” cried Zephyr.
“Yes!” laughed the Dark Apprentice, raising his staff to snare the fleeing Unicorn with an invisible tendril of magic. “Ah, young Scillianstar. Come here!”
It was appalling to see how easily he overmastered the young Unicorn. Fighting, bucking and whinnying in terror, the Unicorn was drawn step by protesting step back towards the Dark Apprentice, who meantime having fended off a sneak attack by Alliathiune, leered at her and declared he would feed her to his Trolls.
“Fie, evil one!” she shot back. “Your end is nigh!”
“Oh, and how is that? Down!” he commanded, forcing Scillianstar to his knees. He nullified the effects of the Unicorn’s horn with another wave of his staff, and turned his attention back to the Dryad. He threw his arms wide. “Come, attack me–I dare you! Command the ground to rise up and swallow me! Call lightning from the heavens like your twisted friend here, who resembles nothing more on the Hills than a toad with a wart on his back! Freeze the air around me with your breath. I know, perhaps I will shrink you and use you as a paperweight? I said down!” Scillianstar’s breath rasped in his throat as the noose was drawn tighter, and the Dark Apprentice forced him over onto his side.
“You will never succeed!” cried Alliathiune, punching her fists at the sky.
But the wizard’s staff sucked up her magic, rendering it useless, and there was a backlash that even through the shield struck her spinning like a top. Again, Zephyr’s telekinesis came to the fore and he broke her tumble somewhat–but despite his efforts, the Dryad was too stunned to rise from where she had fallen, her head lolling loosely upon her neck as consciousness receded.
Once more the Druid Amadorn sought to strike the Dark Apprentice with his skill and cunning, but he too was rebuffed with majestic ease, and crumpled over an invisible blow that blasted him clear of the protecting shield. He fell, senseless and limp, in a heap over a table.
With a tornado of wind, the Dark Wizard drove the remaining creatures back, step by begrudging step, until they stood at last near that selfsame table where the Chief Rodent’s quivering haunches blocked the breeze, with his forequarters wholly hidden beneath the polished wooden worktop. There Snake had also hid himself, pretending to be dead and probably wishing the same, and Kevin, too drunk to lift his head.
