Feynard

by Marc Secchia

  Seeing weapons being raised and preparations for magic commencing, the advancing Trolls broke into a well-trained trot as they limbered up their own curved and barbed swords, which were similar to scimitars in shape but broader and heavier in the blade.

  “Back!” Alliathiune commanded, raising a wall of brambles from the dust at her feet. A gesture of her hands spread it left and right, cutting off the Trolls.

  With a cry, the Men of Ramoth broke out of the narrow draw. They must have been far closer than he had realised, Kevin thought, sliding off the Unicorn’s back to free Zephyr for action. Should he brave the Key-Ring, which had already brought him so much trouble? His hand dropped meekly to his side. Better leave the fighting to those capable of it. He had already lamed himself trying to interfere at the Well!

  Both the Trolls and the Men paused in confusion, eyeing each other with intense suspicion.

  Then the dark creature emerged from the ranks of his followers. It was garbed like a man and moved like a man–but it limped as if walking on a deformed limb. Its skin was dark and shone as burnished bronze beneath Indomalion’s eye. Crimson eyes blazed from a visage devoid of emotion. When it spoke, it was with well-modulated tones that nevertheless chilled every listener to the bone.

  “We meet at last, Keyholder!”

  Zephyr turned his muzzle slightly. “He must mean you, good Kevin.”

  “I am the Kraleon. I am your doom.”

  “Whatever,” Akê-Akê muttered irreverently, never one to be browbeaten. “Get to the point!”

  “Anyone know what a Kraleon is?” Amadorn whispered.

  The red eyes lit upon the Faun as though they would broil his flesh where he stood. “The Men of Ramoth have no quarrel with the servants of Amberthurn. Our quarrel is with this ragtag company–specifically, with the Human wizard. I have sensed his magic from afar.”

  At this, the Trolls took a collective backwards step. As servants of Amberthurn they had a healthy appreciation of wizardry’s perils. The Dragon did not only eat those who displeased him, Zephyr had intimated the previous evening. He experimented on them.

  The Kraleon called, “Merely grant us leave to remove this offence from your territory, and we’ll split the plunder with you–fifty, fifty.”

  “How very kind!” sneered the Witch. “Amberthurn will be highly displeased if you lay so much as a finger upon his chosen envoy.”

  With nary a blink, the creature responded, “A shame the Dragon-Magus hasn’t a single Human in his employ. Think about it, noble Troll. You’d notice someone with red hair, wouldn’t you? You’d know him by rumour, if not by reputation. Trust me, Amberthurn doesn’t even know of this feeble Human’s existence.”

  The Troll scratched his beard. “Seventy thirty.”

  Akê-Akê suggested that the Troll do something creative and unspeakably obscene.

  But how did the creature know he had Great-Grandmother’s Key-Ring, Kevin wondered?

  “Splendid! Now, creatures of the Forest, give up the Human and I may grant you mercy to return to your precious–”

  “Have at us, then!” roared Snatcher, brandishing his mighty club. “Enough of these empty threats!”

  “I’ll make you eat that pathetic stick!”

  “Lovely,” said Amadorn, and unleashed a thunderbolt from the clear sky.

  It was his favourite offensive spell, but the Druid very nearly paid for it with his life. The creature shimmered like sunlight reflected off water as he raised his hand, casually deflecting the bolt of lightning back at its caster. Amadorn was no fool. He could protect himself from the effects of his own magic. But the bolt struck a boulder beside him and blasted it into a million fragments, and one of those fragments struck him above his left temple. The Druid’s legs crumpled.

  At once the Trolls retreated, and the Men of Ramoth swung to the attack. Hunter, Snatcher, and Akê-Akê leaped forward as one. Witch and Dryad assailed the dark creature with a succession of violent spells. Chaos erupted as a bevy of new creatures–shadow bears, salamanders, dense swarms of grimflies, giant crawling insects called Heskids, bats, giant snakes and scorpions, and eels from Mistral Bog–invaded the field of battle causing injury to friend and foe alike. Snatcher found himself caught up in the coils of a giant snake. The Faun was almost swallowed by a toad the size of a house. Their foe clearly did not intend to control his summonings. He laughed aloud as the ground opened to swallow half a dozen of his men, and seemed only to grow stronger the more magic was hurled about.

  Zephyr too, having cast his spells of protection upon the fighters, arrayed himself against the crimson-eyed creature and brought the magic of his horn to bear. “Cymaxis!” he neighed, creating flying reptiles out of thin air. “Hail! Brimstone!”

  The Unicorn was powerful. He enveloped a whole cohort of Men in a sheet of sulphurous flame, while hailstones the size of eggs pelted down upon their archers with deadly accuracy. Hunter went down with an arrow bristling between her ribs. Akê-Akê swatted bats with his mace around Kevin, who had fallen to the ground with blood streaming from a gash in his head. Zephyr cleared the bats with a flick of his horn. The Witch tried to retrieve her leg from a Heskid’s mouth, while the indefatigable Lurk wielded his club like a lumberjack felling trees.

  And then Alliathiune unleashed her most potent weapon yet. With a great cry she subverted most of the magical creatures that had been summoned and bent them to her powerful will, which was to fly or leap, slither or run towards the dark creature, and attack it with mindless abandon. In seconds it was enveloped in a maelstrom of claws, stingers, and teeth. There was a muffled explosion, a puff of smoke, a momentary respite before a dozen more creatures filled the spaces of those killed. The Dryad had taken control in the most dramatic fashion yet. She smiled grimly as she forced the creatures onward, burying their tormentor beneath a wave of bodies.

  “Help the Witch!”

  Zephyr whirled and froze the Heskid where it stood, unsummoned a couple of giant scorpions, cleared the air of smoke. There were dozens of Men left but they had clearly lost their stomach for the fray, and took to their heels as best they could. The groans of the wounded rose into the still evening air.

  “What became of that creature?” asked the Unicorn.

  “It vanished with the smoke,” said Alliathiune, mopping her brow with the back of her forearm. Denied a summoner’s strength and will, the creatures vanished in droves. “Where is Glimmering of Dawn?”

  “Right behind you,” replied the Eagle. His beak and claws dripped blood, and his feathers were torn in a dozen places. “Shall I determine whether the Men have indeed retreated?”

  “If you are able, it would be a service indeed, noble Eagle.”

  “What, by the Hills, is a Kraleon?”

  Zephyr and Akê-Akê shared a glance. “No idea,” they chorused.

  “A demon creature,” said Alliathiune. “That is all we need know. We should see to the Mancat.”

  “And to the Druid,” the Faun put in. “It was a fearsome battle. See how the good outlander tends Amadorn? I do believe we are making progress.”

  Kevin looked up to find a pair of hazel eyes examining him as if the Dryad would wrest his secrets from him by main force. “Have we seen the last of that strange creature? I doubt it,” she said. “Why should it have sensed your magic from afar, good Kevin? Is that how it tracked us? He surely singled out a Human Wizard …”

  Zephyr nodded curtly. “It troubles me that the outlander has not revealed the full extent of his powers. He’s a danger to us all. We will speak anon, good Kevin. You must reveal your secret identity.”

  Kevin made a grunt of disgust. “Ask away, noble one-horn. Ask away.”

  * * * *

  Negotiations with the gatekeepers proved swift and painless. Entry was agreed at a paltry price–due, the Witch muttered drolly, to an earnest desire not to join the dead and dying down there on the field of battle, and a Trollish awe of magic. Best let Amberthurn deal with the travellers!


  It was a grateful party that slowly straggled up the first ascent into the Pass of Old Bones, for they had been sore tested in the fray. The Witch limped along, her right leg and calf heavily bruised. Hunter, struck by a poisoned arrow, lay pale and still in the Lurk’s great arms. Amadorn’s left eye was swollen shut. Zephyr carried his effects, for the Druid needed both hands on his staff to keep from falling. Alliathiune pasted a disgusting concoction of herbs and the sap of a gratha tree onto Kevin’s scrapes and bruises, but she smiled and praised his stoicism as he stiffened under the stinging application.

  “Well done,” she said.

  Kevin muttered, “I was useless back there, just useless!”

  “There’ll be a next time–or do you intend to flatten an entire mountain, o Mighty High Wizard?” replied the little Dryad.

  He was too out of breath to respond to her baiting. At least he was not the only one looking puffed by the gradient!

  “Water?”

  “Thanks, Akê-Akê.” Kevin tilted the flask and let coolness slide down his throat. “Gracious, that feels good!”

  “You have no idea,” rumbled the Lurk, pausing beside them. “We swamp-dwellers feel the lack of moisture acutely. My hide is cracked and chafed by this climate, and my membranes are drying out. But Zephyr says that we should gain the entrance to Amberthurn’s lair before darktime–and there is a stream where we may bathe.”

  “Will you survive this journey?”

  Oblivious to the Faun’s teasing, the Lurk replied, “One of my race has been known to survive two seasons without water–but that was in the cool fastness of the Forest, not on a bleak mountainside like this.”

  “At least it has stopped raining. I can’t abide the rain.”

  Akê-Akê groaned like a mating elk. “I swear by the Oracle of Yanjimkê, whom Fauns consider nearest to the Gods of all creatures–”

  “Who is a contemptible charlatan, a peddler of lies,” the Dryad interrupted.

  “–if you disregard the unbelievers in our midst, good outlander … I swear that I shall make you swallow this mace–sideways–if you dare to voice so much as the tiniest gripe about anything, anything at all, for the next ten seasons!”

  Kevin gulped.

  “True seeing is an art, not an apothecary medicating the emotional needs of the gullible,” Alliathiune pontificated, not yet finished with the Faun. “The real Oracle of Yanjimkê was a holy creature who returned her goodness to the Forest’s root and sod a thousand seasons ago. You speak of a tradition–”

  “He was a Faun!”

  “She was a renegade Dryad, a traitor to her people!”

  “What perversion of history have you been reading, you green skinned Gremlin?” sneered Akê-Akê.

  “Gremlins are real?”

  They both ignored Kevin. “Conjuror of decaying worms!”

  “And you’re a … a whimsical whippersnapper!”

  “Demon-lover!”

  “Interfering, Sälïph-stealing parasite!”

  “Oh!” Alliathiune’s face turned white with fury. “You take that back, you treacherous Faun, or I’ll root you to the ground where you stand!”

  Akê-Akê’s fingers curled like meat hooks. “Just you try it and I’ll unleash the darkest terrors of your imagination upon you before you can blink!”

  “Silence!” snapped Zephyr, knocking them apart with his telekinesis before any harm ensued. “Must you persist in juvenile baiting and name-calling?”

  “He called me a parasite!”

  “Technically, Dryads have a symbiotic relationship with the Forest and not a parasitic one,” Kevin put in, mildly. “There is mutual benefit–the Forest feeds its Dryads and Dryads nurture and protect the Forest. In a way, Dryads embody the living spirit of the Forest.”

  Akê-Akê sniggered, but Alliathiune gasped as though she had been kicked in the gut and a stormy mixture of emotions flashed across her face–gratitude, anger, wonder … what did it all mean? Had he inadvertently touched upon something important? She had clammed up tighter than the vault of the Bank of England. He eyed her askance. Alliathiune was biting her lip and had a twig snarled in her hair halfway down. Untidiness was one of Kevin’s pet peeves. He had to stifle an urge to pluck it out, for he knew from experience how volatile she could be. That would be just begging for a slap. The Dryad was still steamed about Akê-Akê’s comment, he could tell, and the Faun huffed as though he intended to pursue the issue. How they set each other off–stubborn as asses, the pair of them!

  He told them so, in exactly those words.

  Then Kevin stamped off in search of a bite to eat.

  * * * *

  Zephyr said, “Who will deal with the treacherous Dragon-Magus?”

  Kevin looked up from his tome, which he had propped against a convenient stone because of its weight. The Unicorn appeared to be addressing Amadorn, Alliathiune, and the Witch, but a glance across the pond where they had paused for the darktime found the Lurk’s luminous, attentive eyes just visible above the still surface, beside an overhanging thicket of ferns. It beggared belief how a creature of his bulk could hide so effectively in little more than two feet of freezing mountain water. On the bank where a willow tree’s fronds hung like a curtain about to be dipped into the water, the Faun’s cloven hooves turned over a stone as he shifted his weight about.

  Alliathiune held an injured sparrow in her hands, singing a healing Dryadsong softly to it. Did the Dryad never stop caring for the Forest creatures? She was forever patching up lizards, healing voles, mending a falcon’s broken wing, and singing to trees. Mister Jenkins was just too wrapped up in his own doings–too stuck in his personal swamp of despond, as the Lurk had put it.

  “Count me out,” said Akê-Akê, with a visible shudder. “The Dragon-kind have long exploited those who were once my people. A thousand seasons is insufficient to compass the breadth of our mutual hatred. The Dragon would sooner have me grace his dinner table than exchange words!” He brandished his mace at a fissure from which smoke issued–their path for the morning. “But do not think me afraid to brave his lair.”

  “Good Faun, we do not question your bravery, proven at the Bridge of Storms, Shilliabär, and again this lighttime,” said the Unicorn. “But consider that we inquire of a Dragon-Magus who is perhaps one of Feynard’s most powerful living creatures, directions to a magical artefact–the Magisoul–whose very mention must flood his heart with greedy desire. For we know that the heart of every Dragon seeks power, in comparison to which the pretty baubles and troves of gold so fondly recounted by storytellers are but dust and ashes.”

  “Aye, well said,” Amadorn grunted. “Have you met this Amberthurn before, noble Unicorn?”

  “Once, briefly, as part of a larger delegation of Unicorns,” Zephyr admitted. “I doubt he would remember me.”

  “I see. If cunning is required, then by the Circle of Seven Druids, I declare my preference for the Witch. Shrewder companions have we not.”

  The Head Witch said, “Are you calling me sly and conniving, good Druid?”

  “In the best possible way. Are those not basic qualities of every Witch?”

  “Humph.”

  “Would any of our number disagree?”

  “Nay.” “Not I.” “Indeed not.”

  “I thought you did not trust Witches, good Druid?” she pressed.

  “Trust, my fine Witch, hardly enters the equation. If it were an issue of trust, I would choose our noble-hearted lord of the airy spaces above all others. If I sought knowledge, I would plumb the Unicorn’s extensive learning. Were I to face the Dark Apprentice once more–may he fester forever in Shäyol’s foetid armpit–” a grim smile touched his lips “–I would implore the outlander to stand at my side. And if I wanted to leave a Dragon’s lair without having furnished his dinner table, I would choose me a Witch.”

  “I shall consider that a compliment.”

  “As long as the witless outlander were not drunk,” muttered Kevin.

  “Now ther
e’s a thought!” Akê-Akê said merrily. “For if you are able to single-handedly banish the Dark Apprentice whilst blind drunk, imagine what you could do when sober?”

  He stared at his boots. An awful feeling filled the pit of his stomach.

  “Or perhaps if we kept you drunk all the time, we would be invincible?”

  “Mighty High Wizard,” teased Alliathiune.

  Kevin groaned, “Oh, for pity’s sake! Do you have to bring that up again?”

  The Dryad gleefully explained to their companions the origins of this particular joke, while Kevin grumbled and fulminated to the stars above. He had a healthy dislike of being laughed at–being the butt of Brian’s jokes for years would do that, he supposed. But their gentle chuckles and ribbing soon turned to a more serious discussion about how they would approach Amberthurn, which gifts should be offered first, and how they would win his favour.

  When Kevin closed his book with a sigh and looked up, it was to see Snatcher’s eyes appear out of the pond right next to his feet. Darkness was closing in rapidly. A little ways back amongst the rocks, Akê-Akê arranged sticks for a fire.

  “You can’t sneak up on me,” he smiled, beckoning the Lurk closer. “Do you miss the swamp, by any chance, good Lurk?”

  “If you were so alert, good outlander,” rumbled the Lurk, “where now are your bedroll, your boots, and your cloak?”

  “Right … here? Snatcher! What have you done with them?”

  A bubble of laughter rose from the Lurk’s mouth as he surfaced. “I merely moved them a ways off while you were not looking. Such fierce concentration upon the subject of wizardry is commendable indeed.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Tiptoe around like that! You’re ten flipping feet tall and as wide as a barn door, for goodness sake! It’s just not possible!” Kevin wagged his finger at the Lurk. “Stop smirking, Snatcher. I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

  “Your so-called scientific logic hardly constitutes a sound basis for one’s perception of reality,” Snatcher said, confirming his suspicions. “You’d miss an awful lot of Driadorn’s life if you stuck to such narrow principles and preconceived notions of how things ‘ought to be’. You need to broaden your horizons.”