Darkwell

by Douglas Niles

  “Yak!” Tavish turned to the firbolg. “Yak carry Pawldo?”

  “Yak carry Pawll-do!” The giant grinned and plucked the halfling from the water, cradling him like a babe in one of his brawny arms.

  “Hey! Let me go!” Pawldo twisted fruitlessly, then finally noticed the comfort and security of his perch. He settled back against the firbolg’s shoulder. “Well, if you insist … but only for a little while.”

  “Say, where are Yazilliclick and Newt?” the bard wondered aloud.

  Tristan looked around but saw no sign of the faeries. “Probably exploring somewhere. I’m sure they’ll catch up.”

  Robyn wearily came up to her companions. Her face was pale, and she drew each breath with a ragged gasp. “I … can’t take much more … of this. We’ll have to rest soon.”

  “We will,” promised the king, “though we’ll have to keep a sharp watch on those deathbirds overhead.”

  “I think we’ll be safe in the woods,” declared Pawldo.

  “I hope you’re right. We’ll stop as soon as we reach dry ground again,” the king declared, shivering again. “We can’t stop here in the water. We’d get too cold.”

  Robyn nodded dumbly, and he waited for a minute or two while they all caught their breath. Grimly Tristan took his place at the front, following Canthus across an open stretch of shallow water. Here, at least, he didn’t have to hack the ubiquitous vines out of the way. Since the path was narrow and winding, the deathbirds were not tempted to attack.

  The wind became more savage, raging from the north, full into their faces. The companions trudged silently forward, Tristan trying to keep their heading as close to true north as possible. The thick clouds prevented him from plotting their course by the sun, but many of the larger trees had streaks of dried moss upon their permanently sunless north sides, and he used these as a guide.

  Canthus stopped with a sudden growl, up to his belly in water. His hackles bristled, and he turned his proud head to the left.

  Tristan saw a bubbling eruption of water and mud through the trees, and he felt the ground quiver beneath his feet. Instinctively he backed away from the disturbance, watching as clouds of greenish gas drifted upward from the ground. Waves rolled outward from the site, and then water began to pour into the newly formed hole with a thunderous roar.

  “It’s another one of those fissures, like the one that almost finished me!” He stood, awestruck, watching the land’s torment from a safe distance. Then, as the gas began to spread away from the pit, he led his companions away as fast as they could march.

  “The whole vale is being destroyed,” said Tavish, horrified. “That tar pit, these fissures—everything points to destruction far beyond anything the isles have ever known!”

  She was right, Tristan sensed. Robyn had known this for many days, but the reality of the menace had taken longer to crystallize in his own mind. Now there could be no doubt: The very survival of the vale, perhaps of all Gwynneth and the Moonshaes, was at stake!

  Desperately he forced his way through the swamp, now hacking at the branches that seemed to reach out to drag him back, now forging along a brief, open stretch of marsh. Finally he noticed the water growing more shallow, and then he stumbled onto a low hillock of soggy ground. Barely the size of a small farmyard, the land jutted no more than a foot or so out of the water, but at least it was dry!

  He collapsed on the bank, exhausted, as one by one the others joined him. After a moment’s rest, he pulled his boots off, shocked at the pallid lifelessness of his legs. His toes had begun to turn blue, and all feeling had long since gone from his feet. Desperately he massaged the chilled flesh, trying to restore circulation before it was too late.

  The others, too, worked desperately to prevent frostbite or worse as the chilling wind moaned through the trees. They all shivered uncontrollably, but it looked as though none of them would lose any toes—at least for the time being.

  “Newt and Yazilliclick still haven’t returned,” said Robyn suddenly. Tristan realized with a start that he had forgotten about their diminutive companions.

  “Those two will bring all kinds of trouble back with ’em, I’m sure,” grumbled Pawldo. “They probably found some horrible monster, woke it up, and made it mad, and now they’re on their way back with it!”

  “I’m worried,” admitted the king. “It isn’t like them to go off on their own for this long. Just the same, they’ve both spent all their lives in the vale until recently, and if any of us can find our way around in here, it’s Newt and Yaz!”

  He felt a sudden, stinging touch at the back of his neck and slapped the spot instinctively. Then he felt another on his hand and one on his face—not so much stinging as cold. A quick look around confirmed his suspicions, even as Robyn made the observation.

  “It’s snowing.” White, icy crystals of snow, driven by the wind, had begun to sift down through the gaunt branches. As they watched, the snow thickened and swirled, becoming a white shower of cold. The wind increased in force, and the snow quickly grew thicker, so that they could see no more than ten or twelve paces into the woods.

  Slumping against the ground, the king felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, as if Nature herself conspired with the evil that opposed them, striving to bring their quest to an ignominious end.

  “That’s all we need!” groaned the halfling.

  “I don’t know …” mused the bard. “It might make the woods a little prettier. I was getting tired of looking at black and brown all the time. I’d like a little white!”

  Robyn laughed suddenly. “We can build snowmen!” she exclaimed, and Tristan sat up in surprise. He looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

  “Or build a sled!” This came from Pawldo. “I’ll bet Yak could pull us all in comfort!”

  Tristan couldn’t help but laugh himself. “If you’re all going to be so damned cheerful about this, maybe now is the time to get moving again!”

  “Right you are,” agreed the bard, heaving herself to her feet.

  “Boy, this place sure has changed! I can’t find anyone around here to tease anymore!” The shrill voice, with its familiar whine, came as a welcome surprise to them all. In another second, Newt became visible, hovering before Tristan with an indignant look on his now orange face.

  “Where have you been?” demanded the king.

  “Why, in the vale, of course! I should think that would be quite obvious even to—”

  “Don’t do that again! It’s important that we stick together.” Tristan didn’t try to conceal his anger.

  “We were all worried about you.” Robyn took a softer tone, casting a harsh look at the king.

  “Worried? About me?” The faerie dragon looked pleased. “And well you should be! I have been so bored! I used to find deer and squirrels to scare with my illusions, and even bears and boars. But none of them are left! You don’t suppose I frightened them away, do you?”

  “No, I should think not. But you and Yazilliclick should stick closer to us from now on.” Robyn tried to sound stern. “We can’t afford to get separated.”

  “Where is Yazilliclick?” asked Tavish, suddenly concerned.

  “Why, with you, of course! At least, that’s what I thought. He didn’t want to go exploring. He’s really kind of a party pooper, sometimes. Hey, Yaz, where are you?”

  But the only answer was the moaning of the wind, and all they could see was the cloak of blinding snow closing in more tightly around them. They shouted for the sprite several times, but there was no response.

  “We can’t risk calling too much attention to ourselves,” cautioned the king. “I hope he catches up with us, but we’ll have to press on without him”

  “Do you think the deathbirds have gone to ground?” asked the bard, noticing that none of the soaring creatures were visible in the swirling snow.

  “Could be, but we can’t count on it. Still, the snow might give us a chance to cover our tracks. Let’s go.”

  Robyn turned to
the faerie dragon. “You didn’t happen to see anything we could use for shelter, did you? Near here?”

  Newt shook his head. “You mean like a house? Or a castle? Nah … there’s nothing around here but the ruins of that big firbolg lair we burned down.”

  “Ruins?” Pawldo’s eyes lighted. “Where? How far?”

  “Oh, not far,” Newt replied, shrugging. “In fact, they’re just over the next patch of water. But why do—”

  “Is there enough left of them that we could take shelter there?” asked Tristan.

  “I should say not!” Newt sniffed at the very thought. “Why, it’s damp and drafty, and there’s soot all over the tunnels, and it’s still huge. I can’t imagine why you’d even think of such a thing!”

  “It’s better than these naked trees! Can you lead us there?” Tristan tried to direct the dragon’s attention.

  “What? Oh, sure. But hey, aren’t we going to have something to eat first? I’m starved! I suppose you guys sat around here all afternoon and took it easy, but I’ve been—”

  “The ruins! Take us there now! Then you can eat!”

  “Humph! No need to get angry about it. I guess too much rest can do that to a person. All right, all right. I’ll take you there!”

  The snowstorm continued to grow in fury as the party once again plodded into the fens. Tristan hoped that the dragon was right and that there was enough left of the firbolg stronghold to provide them some shelter. Though the deathbirds remained invisible somewhere in the storm, the king knew that they were doomed unless they gained protection from the snow and wind beside the warmth of a fire.

  Thick snow swirled in an eddy, gathering against a sheer rock wall. The drift grew quickly, covering the narrow shelf to a depth of several feet. Above, a craggy face of granite soared upward and disappeared into the night. Below yawned a vast chasm.

  The only movement here was the endless shifting and blustering of the snow. But then came a more solid motion, and a figure appeared, climbing slowly along the steep shelf. It walked upright, like a human, yet it was heavily muffled in a cape of thick fur. It left manlike footprints with its high, thick boots, but these footprints quickly vanished under the persistent onslaught of fresh snow.

  Darkness was almost complete, yet this figure walked with precise steps along the very edge of the precipice. When it reached the high drift, two mitten-covered hands emerged from the cape. The figure took a blunt, hoelike object from its back and quickly cut a footpath through the drift. It followed the path as it was cut, and even as the snow drifted across the path behind it, the figure emerged on the other side of the drift and continued up the ledge.

  Finally it stood at the crest of a sheer ridge, where the full force of the north wind carried the snow up the far side. Ducking against the increased force of the gale, the figure began to descend. Moving steadily through the night, as the snow grew deeper, it pushed its way down the high mountain ridge and into the still snowy but less windy reaches below.

  The snow lay heavy on the low country, drifting into deeper and deeper piles. Here the figure paused and awkwardly reached beneath its cape to pull forth a pair of snowshoes. Attaching these to its feet, it shuffled onward, still making slow, steady progress against the storm.

  The body was entirely cloaked in fur—the fur of winter garments. Only a pair of wide eyes, with large brown pupils, was visible beneath the furs, and even those eyes peered from the depths of a fur-lined hood and woolen scarf.

  All night, and into the white dawn, the figure never once stopped to rest or eat or drink. It followed an unmarked trail, somehow finding its course through a snowy wasteland of leafless trees and barren hills.

  Then it climbed across a broad, snow-swept hillside and found a wide path entering a hilltop grotto, concealed by high limestone walls and somewhat sheltered from the violence of the storm. Here, in this small vale in the hills, the traveler finally paused.

  Here it stood still for some minutes, looking around the grotto. Finally the figure pushed through a drift of snow higher than its head to reach a niche in one of the limestone walls. And there it found what it sought.

  The traveler knelt beside another creature, this one a great white horse, now blood-spattered and torn. The stallion’s flanks were still and its eyes were closed, but a wisp of steam emerged faintly from its bloody nostrils.

  The traveler removed the mittens, revealing humanlike hands that were very slender, with long, narrow fingers. Gingerly those fingers reached for the stallion’s head.

  The Starling rounded the head of Oman’s Isle and at last raced with the wind. She leaped foaming crests of gray sea in her eagerness to make the shelter of Iron Bay. There, in the most powerful bastion of the northman inhabitants of the Moonshaes, Koll and Gwen would certainly find shelter from the ravenous hordes that had fallen upon their home.

  At least, that was the plan. Koll guided the little vessel through rough seas that he knew heralded the first storms of winter. The pair had eaten no food in two days and had drunk the last of their water twelve hours ago. Not until the Iron Keep hove into view did he allow himself a measure of optimism, but finally it looked as though they would make safe landfall.

  The fortress loomed high above the bay. The dark stone of its walls gave it the reddish-black hue that had provided its name. Though not truly made of metal, the Iron Keep’s walls were hard and its position unassailable. It had stood for a hundred years as a symbol of northern might, and no doubt would stand a hundred more.

  Koll and Gwen, far from shore in the bay, could not see the cleric Hobarth poised beneath the walls of the fortress. Nor could they see the masses of undead swarming from all across Oman’s Isle to finally converge upon the fortress. They were not aware of the Claws of the Deep emerging from the shore of Iron Bay to march upon the fortress from seaward.

  And they could not hear the words of Hobarth’s powerful chanting as he called upon the might of his god to lend power to the cleric’s most awesome spell: the earthquake.

  But they saw the effects.

  Dumbstruck, the pair watched the high wall of the Iron Keep crack, crumble, and fall before their eyes. A breach a hundred feet across fell open, and Koll and Gwen could see the massive army crawling into that breach to meet the thin line of northmen who recovered from the disaster in time to take up arms.

  The result of the battle was perhaps not preordained, but it may as well have been. Thousands of attackers poured into the breach, to be met by hundreds of defenders. The defenders could not stand nor did they.

  The Starling bobbed to a halt in the choppy waters of the bay as her two passengers fell silent, stunned observers of the end. Nor did they turn about until flames had erupted from every part of the castle, ample proof of evil’s triumph.

  “And where can we go now? What is left to us?” demanded Gwen.

  “We can’t return to Gwynneth. We’ve seen what awaits on that shore.” Koll did not consider the possibility of landing in southern Gwynneth. The Ffolk of Corwell were every bit as much the enemy to him as were the Claws of the Deep. “Likewise we have seen the fate of Oman’s Isle—our fate, to be sure, if we make landfall here.

  “I see but one choice. We shall sail on to Norland. There, if that land has been spared the fates of these, we shall find help. King Grunnarch the Red rules there, and his vengeance will be terrible when he hears of these outrages.”

  He did not mention that, to get to Norland they must sail without provisions into the teeth of the first winter storm across the breadth of the Sea of Moonshae.

  Oh, yes, all this in a boat not meant to sail beyond the sight of land.

  Wide yellow eyes watched the circling of the flock, but Shantu did not move toward the grotto. The beast, with an unnatural patience, waited for the chance to slay a lone member of the party. One by one, they would die, but there was plenty of time.

  Shantu saw the flock depart and then return. It heard the screams of the horses, and the beast sensed that its prey had
departed. With stealth and speed, it loped around the hill and found the chute into the Fens of the Fallon.

  Here, though the companions had traveled through water, in many places leaving no physical trail, the displacer beast again took up the trail. Slipping silently through the chill mire, now a thing of the swamp, Shantu moved quickly in order to close with its prey.

  Then came the wind and the snow and the storm. This, of all things, was hateful to the beast, for it was a creature of blackness and fire. Shantu growled into the face of the wind, but the weather blustered even harder. Finally the storm did what neither fatigue nor hunger had been able to do: It forced the displacer beast to seek shelter and delay its hunt.

  Shantu found the root cluster of a massive tree, recently fallen, and it curled up in this slight protection, still snarling its rage against the storm. The killing, for now, would have to wait …

  “Throw another stick on the fire,” suggested Pawldo lazily, leaning back against a slab of rock and wiggling his hairy toes at the very fringes of the fire. “Oh, yeah!” He watched tendrils of steam curl upward from his feet.

  “It hurts to thaw them out again, but I love it!” the bard agreed as her own feet absorbed the welcome warmth of the blaze.

  They had found a large chamber, partially underground and completely insulated against the wind and snow, in the ruins of the firbolg lair. Though the inferno they had created—more than a year earlier, upon their escape from this place—had damaged it heavily, destroying the wooden beams that had supported the stones, much of the original structure remained intact. Stone ceiling tiles rested upon solid stone or earthen walls, creating long passages without obstruction. The larger rooms had all collapsed, and in places the corridors were blocked with piles of rubble, but much of the stronghold remained habitable.

  An interconnecting network of passages remained, sheltered by the huge stones of the fortress that had fallen in upon themselves. Some of the fortress had been underground, and those tunnels remained virtually intact. After a little exploring, they had come upon a large room connected to the outside by a winding corridor, with several other passages apparently leading to the depths of the building. The deathbirds remained outside the narrow entrance, perched in the branches of nearby trees.