The Southern Trail (Book 4)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “Here,” Marco held his finger out. “Let me test how strong your jaws are. Suck on this,” he ordered.

  “My jaws? What do they have to do with anything?” the boy scornfully asked.

  “I’ll tell you after we do this,” Marco still held his finger in the air.

  The boy snorted derisively, then pulled the finger to his mouth. He sucked on it, then coughed and gagged as he whipped his head away from Marco’s hand.

  “How’d you do that?” he demanded. He grabbed the hand and turned it, looking at it incredulously.

  “Do what?” Marco asked, picking up a piece of ham and taking a bite.

  “That water – where did it come from?” the boy demanded.

  Nestor burst out in laughter. The boy glared at him, then took Marco’s finger and tried it again, and got the water again.

  “Where does it come from?” he questioned Marco less combatively.

  “It’s from a magic spring way up north. A spirit from the spring enchanted my finger. She was a lady, but she was made all of water, and she stood on top of the spring water,” Marco let excitement creep into his voice.

  The boy’s eyes grew wide. “Really? No way!” he replied.

  “Honestly. And the water is magic water. It’ll help your body heal if you drink enough. It helped you heal didn’t it?” Marco swung around to ask Nestor.

  “I had stab wounds last night, and I walked home from Rurita city today,” he confirmed.

  The boy was uncertain in the face of the unexpected water and the testimonial from the village leader. He swallowed three more mouthfuls. “So I’ll be able to walk after this?” he asked.

  “Not right away,” Marco answered. The boy’s protective shell had cracked, and he had asked his question with a hopeful yearning. “But you’ll start getting better tonight while you sleep, and you can have more of the water tomorrow morning.

  “Now go along and tell the other kids to hurry in here,” Marco directed.

  “You’ll stay until tomorrow morning?” Nestor asked once the boy was gone.

  “There’s no choice, is there?” Marco asked. “I can’t just leave the boy like that.”

  And so Marco patiently served a score of children who came into the room, and finishing with the final one after the sun had set.

  “Come out and join us around the fire,” Corinne asked him kindly. “We’re all singing together to celebrate Nestor’s return.”

  Marco left the house and followed the woman to the center of the village, where a large bonfire cast a cheerful ruddy glow upon the faces of those who sat around the fire. Corinne made room for him to sit on the same log that she and Nestor sat upon, and the group started singing a song that Marco didn’t know, one that was a longing song about going to a home far away. He listened to the unsteady voices sing the lyrics while filled with emotion.

  They all immediately switched to another song, one with alternating verses sung by the women and then the men, a humorous, spiraling tale of domestic disaster that had them all laughing at the end.

  A woman came and sat sideways, straddling the very end of the log where Marco sat, so tightly tucked up onto the narrow band of lumber that her backside was firmly set against his thigh. “So you’ve got a magical finger that will make my Massey get better?” she asked, looking directly into Marco’s face, searching desperately for some sign of hope.

  Marco remembered the six year old girl named Massey, a girl who was pale, pale white, unable to be in sunlight without getting terrible blisters on her skin. She had come into the house swaddled in layers of dark woolen blankets, and sucked at the water that all the other children with all the other illnesses had consumed.

  “I believe she’ll get better. I’ll give her more in the morning before I go and we’ll see if it’s enough to give her a better life,” he told the woman.

  “She’s the sweetest thing. All I want is for her to be able to play with the other children. It’s not too much for a mother to ask, is it?” the woman had her hand clutching Marco’s arm, unaware of what she was doing.

  “There’s nothing more natural in the world than that,” Marco told her gently. He thought of his own mother, in the foothills near the Lion City. She’d wanted nothing but a good life for her children he knew; he wondered if she’d think that his life qualified.

  Other parents came to see Marco too, to seek reassurance about his treatment for their children, and to each of them he repeated his gauzy belief that the children would get better. And the crowd continued to sing a variety of songs that brought the people together and unified the village residents.

  When Marco went to bed, half the village had gone before him, the logs in the fire had turned to coals, and the moon was high overhead. He slept on a blanket given to him by Corinne, and dreamed of having a son with Mirra, a boy who drank water from Diotima every day.

  He awoke in the morning, to find that the mother of Massey was already there, holding her thin daughter in a thick layer of blankets.

  “I beg your forgiveness,” she apologized, “but I didn’t want to miss you this morning.”

  Marco sat up and gave her a wan smile, then held his finger out for the girl. It had to appear ludicrous, he knew, and the image of lambs stepping up to their mothers, an activity he had watched innumerable times when he had been a shepherd, came to mind once again. It was a silly image, yet perhaps it had some truth to it, he thought to himself, and smiled.

  When Massey had drank several mouthfuls of the spring water, her mother apologized again, then wrapped her daughter and left. Corinne came and offered him milk and bread, and then other children arrived. It was halfway to noon before Marco was finished with his work at the village, and all the children, those who had suffered from any notable malady at all in recent times, had been given water from Diotima’s spring.

  When his duties were finished, he returned to his pallet to pack up his few belongings. He looked up, conscious of someone else in the room, and saw Corinne, holding a large bundle.

  “This food is for you,” the woman told him.

  “Will they really get better?” she asked as she handed the package to him.

  “They will get better,” Marco said solemnly. “I don’t know if they’ll get all the way better after just two treatments, but they will improve. I think many of them will heal completely.

  “And who knows,” he said as he placed the bundle into his knapsack, “maybe someday I’ll come back this way to check on them.

  “Someday, when this quest is done,” he repeated softly, then stood, and motioned for Corinne to lead the way out of the room. They proceeded to the courtyard space in front of the house, where Nestor was waiting.

  Nestor said good bye to Corinne, who gave a sincere thank you to Marco, crying as she stood and watched him leave the village. “You’ve given all these children something to hope for, something to believe in. That’s the greatest blessing we could ask for, sir. Thank you,” she said emotionally, and then Marco and Nestor left the village, headed east.

  “How far do we need to travel?” Marco asked as they left the clearing and re-entered the encircling forest.

  “It’s about an hour to the southern trail that the travelers use, and then their camp is just a quarter of a mile past that,” Nestor answered.

  They walked on along a continuous string of trails that pointed eastward, with little conversation for the first thirty minutes.

  “Was that true, what you told the boy last night? About that spirit at a spring?” Nestor spoke up suddenly.

  “Yes, it was true,” Marco assured him. “I really met the spirit, and she gave me a gift to help me, the gift of her spring water. When she gave it to me, I thought it was just for me, but I think she knew that it would help others. Others knew about her spring,” Marco told him.

  “That’s an amazing story,” Nestor said with a shake of his head.

  “It was an amazing experience,” Marco said softly. The journey that had taken him to the s
pring had been amazing; he’d traveled with Ophiuchus up to that point, he’d fought the Echidna, traveled through the underworld, become enraptured with Mirra, and yet still, being in the presence of the two supernatural beings had been amazing – frightening and confusing but also comforting, especially compared to so many of the other activities that had occurred since then. The whole adventure had changed him, there was no doubt, but he hoped that when it was all finished, he’d come to find that the two spirits were pleased with both the outcome and him.

  Several minutes later they reached an opening in the forest, and Marco saw that a narrow band of sunlight was reaching down to the forest floor in a nearly straight line stretching north and south. The opening had a beaten dirt and stone path in the center, a veritable highway compared to most of the other byways he had seen since leaving the ruins of the city of Rurita.

  “This is the road they take,” Nestor used the term ‘road’ liberally. “Shall we go look at their camp?” he asked. “It’s just a little bit further.”

  Marco nodded his assent, and they passed through the sunlight and re-entered the shade of the forest on the other side.

  They walked for five minutes, and Nestor raised his hand to point to the right. Marco looked, and saw the camp. A number of trees had been thinned away among the forest, and the weeds and bushes that grew under the canopy were also absent, or trampled down.

  “It’s empty. They’re gone,” Nestor stated the obvious.

  “I’m ready to find them,” Marco said as he stood. “Thank you Nestor,” he said as he turned to his guide. “I can go on from here. Go back to Corinne and your village, and get on with your life.”

  “Thank you for the mercy you’ve shown us,” Nestor said to Marco. He held out his hand; they shook, and then he departed.

  Marco stood and watched him go, then went to the camp site. He found four fire pits, all of them filled with ashes. There were no coals, there was no warmth coming from the pits – the camp had emptied out hours before, at the very least. The ground was trampled with numerous boot prints, making it impossible for Marco to determine if the princess had been there. He found a broken leather strap, and a few other pieces of evidence of habitation, but nothing definitive about Ellersbine.

  He gave up searching the campsite, and went back to the trail, then returned to the major trail, the corridor that ran north and south. He realized that he had no evidence that his quarry had gone south; he had just presumed they were headed in that direction. The ground was stony and compact, leaving no clear evidence of traffic where his trail crossed it. With his head down, Marco began to slowly walk south, looking along the verge and trying to spot soft patches of soil where tracks might have pressed into the soil.

  His search took only one hundred yards distance to find boot prints on the side of the trail, heading south. The prints looked relatively fresh, made within the past day it appeared. He went back north and searched to make sure there was no evidence of anyone having gone in that direction as well, but a search up the road covering twice the distance of his southern search found only older prints pointed south.

  Satisfied that he knew which way to go, Marco started jogging along the southern path. It ran straight, rising and falling with a gently rolling forested landscape for two miles or more, then began to twist and amble as the terrain grew rougher and the mountainous region reasserted its nature.

  Marco struggled to maintain his pace as sunset began to fall. He slowed down to a walk, both hands on his hips, breathing hard. As he walked he scanned the ground along the sides of the narrower trail as it climbed the vertical ascents in zigzagging and valley hugging slopes, and spotted the ongoing procession of boots that reassured him his quarry was moving in the same direction he was.

  As long as there was sunlight to follow, Marco walked along the trail. When darkness became complete, he stopped and worked his way into a leafy thicket of bushes above the trail. He lit his hand, the brightness of the palm and fingertips producing enough illumination for him to root through the supplies Corrine had offered. He found a ham sandwich, its bread compressed into a thick, chewy wrap around the meat after the day of traveling inside his pack; despite its mistreatment, the sandwich proved to be delicious – savory and tender. Marco alternately took bites of the meat and sipped spring water from his finger, as he wondered how long it would take him to catch up to the kidnappers who were ahead of him.

  Marco lay on the ground and fell quickly asleep. He dreamed of a scattered collection of his adventures – cutting off his hand to avoid the possession by Iago’s evil energy, facing the Echidna in the loathsome cavern, struggling through the caverns of the underworld in his bid to return to the surface, and jumping through the air in his desperate attempt to defeat Iamblichus.

  He awoke with a start to the feel of rain drops pelting him. The sky had been clear when he had laid down, but clouds had invisibly moved overhead, hidden by the thick canopy of tree limbs while he slept, and now they were releasing their heavy load of moisture upon him and all the land around him.

  There was a trace of dawn’s early light trying to reach though the eastern sky, he saw, but not enough to be of value to him. Marco raised his hand and concentrated, then raised a dome overhead, a protective shield that blocked the rain from further soaking him, too late to keep him from shivering momentarily. He gave a sigh, aggravated by the unexpected discomfort, then focused his attention on his use of the powers contained in his hand. He closed his eyes, then tried to call upon the energy to simultaneously maintain the shield overhead while also producing light from his hand.

  The energy did nothing for several seconds, then abruptly flickered forth with a feeble light, one that continued to flicker. Calling upon the sorcery to do two things at once was not an easy task, something that was barely within the scope of his largely self-taught control.

  Marco looked down at his knapsack, then looked over at the food supplies Corrine had given him; the bag was wet, and in the flickering light from his hand it appeared to be moving. He crouched down to examine it, holding his hand low to provide as much illumination as it could, and then saw to his disgust that swarms of ants and other insects had discovered and begun devouring the food he had been given. His delicious supply of food for the next several days was ruined.

  Frustrated by the loss of the food on top of the rain that had awoken him prematurely after his uneasy sleeping nightmares, Marco raised his hand in frustration and allowed his sorcery energy to explode outward in an expression of all that he was dissatisfied with.

  The light from his hand burst into a nova-like brightness, and the shield overhead turned bright, then expanded exponentially. The shield thunderously flew outward and upward. The trees immediately around him were knocked flat to the ground; they all were laid down, pointing outward from where he crouched, as the shield bulldozed them out of its way in its rushed growth, before it weakened and dissolved at a distance of a hundred yards away from him. In the meantime, the top of the shield flew upward, growing larger and retaining its integrity as it flew through the air, rising faster than any bird Marco had ever seen take to the air. It was a glowing disk of energy that rose high, then higher, then reached the rain clouds above, still intact. The shield opened a circular hole in the clouds, an extraordinary event to witness, one that revealed the faintly lit dawn-colored upper reaches of the atmosphere above the cloud cover.

  Rain resumed falling upon Marco, who looked up in surprise and shock at the results of his temper tantrum. He’d not unleashed such power since he had hammered upon the sorceress at the palace in the Lion City.

  The land was cleared around him, a weak beam of sunlight was falling upon him through the hole in the clouds, and the rain continued to fall upon him and his ruined supply of food.

  He shook his head slightly as he closed his eyes. Marco let him mind go blank, then stood and picked up his backpack, without any of Corrine’s food.

  The ground seemed to shiver suddenly. Marco thr
ew his arms out in the air, wind-milling them to keep his balance for a few seconds until calm returned to the earth. He stood and waited, fearful that the quake might repeat, but after a long minute all was calm, and Marco proceeded to resume his travels through the rain. His initial travel was a slow process of climbing over the prone trunks of fallen trees, punctuated by sliding and slipping in the rivulets of rain water that turned the road into a muddy quagmire.

  By the end of his first hour, Marco finally straddled a tree trunk for the last time, and saw the trail he wanted to follow curving away through the rain. The path ahead descended as it went around a bend, so that he could see no more than another hundred yards ahead.

  With a shrug of his shoulders, Marco repositioned his pack, then started stamping through the puddles, resolutely determined to travel as fast and far as possible during the day. The rain would wash away tracks and traces of the passage of the travelers in front of him, yet it would also be likely to slow them down, if not even possibly pin them down in one spot for a day.

  As he rounded the curve, Marco saw that much to his surprise, the trail took a sharp turn ahead and disappeared into the mountain. A tunnel, clearly manmade, with roughhewn sides and ceiling, sank at a gentle angle of descent, a pitch black opening that appeared to be his only option to follow.

  Chapter 15

  Marco stepped into the mouth of the tunnel, and progressed inward far enough to be protected from the rain. He looked behind him at the grey curtain of rain that reduced the visibility outside the stony enclosure, then he turned to look at the absolute darkness that was ahead. The path offered no other option than to descend into the underground; he prayed that it was only the underground, and not another dreadful journey down into the underworld land of the dead. He had no wish to suffer that experience again.

  There was no choice on what to do. There was only a puzzle – it made little sense for a lightly-traveled country trail to have a lengthy tunnel carved in order for the path to go through a mountain that seemed no different from the many others that the path had simply gone around or gone over. The tunnel was a massive piece of work, and it could not be justified by the amount of traffic that the path carried.