by GJ Kelly
The arrow was smooth to the touch, and she nocked it carefully to the string. Weight-matched the arrows might be, but the folk of Threlland who’d made them were carpenters, joiners, furniture makers, more used to producing dowels for joints and rods for curtains than weapons of war. She wondered if she would ever enjoy the accuracy afforded by a true elven longshaft again.
“Hear that?” Pahdreg whispered.
“The creature has been making hissing calls for some time.” Valin replied.
“Ah, sorry.”
A slight shake of Valin’s head dismissed the apology. “Our hearing is different,” he said, softly.
At fifty yards from the glade, the creature halted its advance and moved sideways a little.
“There! I glimpsed ‘im! Couldn’t say if ‘e were sheep or wolf though,” Trigo whispered urgently.
“It is moving cautiously now,” Elayeen whispered back. “Moving from tree to tree, remaining hidden from direct view. Perhaps receiving no answer to its call has made the creature more fearful than it has been in more than two centuries.”
“Another approaches from the south,” Meeya announced from their rear, “A hundred yards, perhaps a little more. Moving slowly, low to the ground.”
Another hiss, clearly heard from the closest creature, moving with surprising agility and using the trees well to shield its approach. It was now almost thirty yards from them and still unseen by ordinary eyes.
“It appears to have changed,” Elayeen whispered. “And grown taller.”
“The other is not moving, or moving very slowly,” Meeya replied.
“There!” Pahdreg pointed, “I caught a glimpse too! I thought…”
They waited, but the mayor frowned, and shrugged.
“Thought what, Serre Pahdreg?” Valin demanded.
“I thought it looked like a person. But it cannot be.”
“Nah,” Trigo agreed, “Not even the clodwit could’ve survived up ‘ere alone all this time.”
When the approaching darkness was twenty yards from the group gathered in the glade, it lost all advantage of cover. The trees here were widely spaced, hence the glade, and it could not hide its progress towards them. Instead, perhaps fearless or perhaps emboldened by its own longevity and past success, it stepped out into plain sight, and the men of Mornland drew in a sharp breath…
Padding towards them, barefoot and entirely naked, was a girl of perhaps fifteen years, wide-eyed, lips parted slightly, arms outstretched towards them as if pleading, beautiful though wearing an expression of profound fear. She moved quickly, long black hair flowing, fingers reaching out, lips moving silently as if forming words she was too terrified to speak.
Elayeen promptly drew string and shot her low in the belly, just above the line of dark, fine pubic hair. Valin loosed his shot a moment later, and the girl fell to her knees, arms still outstretched, face convulsing violently.
Pahdreg shot her in the head, the horror of the vision of youthful loveliness writhing ten yards away robbing him of the memory of prior instructions to aim low.
Incredibly, the girl stood again, arms swinging outwards, and then a mass of tendrils sprouted as though thousands of worms were breaking free of her flesh. The face, once lovely and terrified, became a hook-beaked monstrosity, arms curling around before it, a thick, glistening and leathery skin like a bat’s wing stretching from ankle to wrist, a tall and leathery pitcher in which to envelope its prey.
Trigo knelt, aimed low, and loosed his bolt, immediately jamming his boot through the cocking-stirrup to begin the process of reloading. The shot galvanised Elayeen and Valin, and two more yard-long arrows slammed into the black and pulsing target which even now had the creature changing shape once again.
But the impacts of so many pointed projectiles had taken their toll. The fist-sized peach-pit heart of the beast had been struck with great force, and eldeneyes could see the rupture forming even as the tendrils of change began lashing and writhing from the creature’s extremities.
“Knock it down!” Elayeen shouted, shooting it in the head, hoping to topple it over. Instead, it staggered back a pace, but remained upright, and facing them from ten yards away.
“Get down! Get down!” Elayeen screamed, and twisting her back to the creature, flung herself to the woodland floor.
Bodies slammed to the ground around her, and she heard Meeya gasp in pain as Rickerd threw himself across her back.
And then there came the roaring rush of air sounding like a waterfall, and intense heat on their backs as the geyser of purple fire scorched the air above them, then faded, and was gone.
As they heaved themselves to their feet, they saw Rickerd gently grasp Meeya by the shoulders, and lift her upright and deposit her onto her feet as easily as a parent might lift and land a toppled infant struggling to learn how to walk. He stopped short of brushing her down, though, and looked sheepish in the face of her ire.
On the ground to the northwest, more glowing embers fading fast, and another greasy, smoking stain.
“The creature to the south remains unmoved,” Meeya announced, brushing leaves and debris from her tunic, careful to avoid touching her right side too forcefully.
“We have destroyed two of its number. It will perhaps be more circumspect than the others.”
A faint hiss pierced the silence of the woodland, and it came from south.
“If them things learn, young miss, might be we have to go fer it, rather than wait fer it to come fer us.”
“Then let us hope it does not learn, Master Hunter, for the copse is large and we are few.”
oOo
14. One Lump or Three
They waited, Valin and Rickerd standing close to Meeya, her breathing shallow and faster than normal, the elfin not daring to take too large a breath lest the pain from her ribs stab instead of merely burn and throb. Elayeen flicked her gaze from the dull grey of the motionless creature in the south to her injured friend, and the sight of Meeya wincing and distinctly uncomfortable seriously dented Elayeen’s former bravado.
It was true, her heart had been broken at Raheen, the throth which had bound her and Gawain together shattered in a blast of white light which had also temporarily robbed her of sight. That same light had wrought other changes within her, not the least of which was the resurrection of the Sight of the Eldenelves, a trait all elfkind had once shared until the traitor Toorsen and his creed had begun their long and patient work to breed it out and consign it to history.
Yet, blind and frightened and alone at the foot of Raheen’s Downland Pass, in a dusty room of an abandoned inn, Elayeen had begun to see shapes glowing in the dark around her, and later, Gawain had held her close, and together they had begun to rebuild their love.
Until, that was, the rise of Eldengaze, and the compulsions imposed upon her from the depths of myth; commands from a she-wizard long-dead, a she-wizard every inch as ruthless and determined as Morloch himself. It was that ruthlessness which had taken elves by the throat and brought them to their knees on the banks of the Canal of Thal-Marrahan. That ruthlessness which had robbed the miserable Yonas of his wits and left him a terrified child weeping on the Morrentill, hearing forever in his mind the sound of Eldengaze rasping a childish rhyme over and over, leaving him alive only for the sake of his throth-bound wife.
After the destruction at Far-gor of the ahk-Viell known as the Sceptre of Toorsen, and although the compulsions lingered, Elayeen no longer heard that she-wizard’s rasping voice in her own head, and had come to think of it as nothing more than a shadow of a memory thankfully fading. Until yesterday, when Valin’s Sight had met hers, and the faint but unmistakeable voice had risen from the past once more. Foolish child. This is not your path.
Seeing her best friend’s pain shook Elayeen’s confidence, and she did her best to focus her attention wholly on the creature a hundred yards or more to the south. It hadn’t moved, and apart from a solitary hiss which had gone unanswered some minutes before, it remained silent as w
ell as motionless.
“Are you able to walk well enough, Meemee?” she asked quietly.
“Isst. And run if I must, though not for long. I am well enough, if I do not breathe heavily. Or laugh.”
“Then I shall try not to make you laugh,” Elayeen smiled, her gaze still fixed on the distant beast. “But I cannot promise we won’t have to run. We shall advance a little. Slowly, and with great caution.”
Weapons were hastily re-checked, and deep breaths taken by the Mornlander men at the rear. It occurred to her that those men had depended entirely on the three elves for their courage when they’d climbed Croptop Hill together. Now, though, they had faced not one but two dreadful and deadly enemies, and prevailed. They had stood together, and those men would never be the same again. For good or ill, they had Elayeen to thank or to blame for that. The insight gave her a clearer understanding of Gawain’s impact on the world, which extended so much further than the simple reach of his sword.
They had inched some ten yards to the south when the creature began moving, though not forward to engage them. Instead, it turned to the northwest. It moved slowly at first, pausing from time to time as if to watch or to listen for its pursuers. Elayeen altered their course accordingly, trying to shorten the distance between them without unduly alarming their prey now that the creature had become the hunted.
Valin swept the way ahead with eldeneyes, Meeya the rear, leaving Elayeen to keep her own eyes on the beast. The men of Mornland simply followed, watchful and moving as quietly as they could. And still, the only sounds they heard were of their own making, the woodlands remaining all the more ominous for it.
After another twenty yards threading their way through the trees, it was Trigo who broke the silence.
“Seems like it’s leading us to the centre o’ the wood,” he whispered.
“It does,” Valin agreed.
Trigo sniffed the air. “And the gap, be we closin’ it?”
“Yes,” Elayeen whispered.
“Might be it wants us to,” the old hunter murmured. “Might be its lair is there, and more o’ them things.”
“If so, Master Hunter,” Valin asserted, “We shall see them long before they can strike at us.”
“That be our fervent ‘ope too, friend Ranger,” Trigo murmured again.
Elayeen altered their track more to the north, and increased their pace. The creature they were stalking seemed intent upon achieving the centre of the woodlands exactly as Trigo had deduced, and she intended to intercept the thing before it could reach the safety of whatever hole in the ground or other den it had called home for more than two centuries.
When they were but thirty yards from it and closing rapidly, their quarry maintaining its unhurried pace, the way ahead seemed to eldeneyes suddenly foggy, a misty blur which obscured all life-lights. Elayeen came to a halt, gazing wide-eyed ahead, trying to make sense of the mist. And then the creature disappeared within it, and was entirely lost from view.
For several long minutes the hunters stood quietly, eyeing the silent woodlands around them, waiting for Elayeen to say or do something. For her part, she stood at the ready, braced in case a herd of evil thundered out from the blanket of mist obscuring her vision. Nothing came. Finally, after cocking her head this way and that and hearing nothing, she whispered:
“Valdo, do you see anything?”
“I do not. The mist obscures all.”
“Mist?” Pahdreg said softly. “There is no mist.”
“To your eyes, no,” Meeya announced, “Yet to the eyes of Rangers, a mist lies some thirty paces from us towards the centre, and we can no longer see the creature within it.”
“Then beg pardon young miss,” Trigo sniffed again, “We’ll have to use our own eyes, and get closer to it. It’s that, or go ‘ome with the job but two parts done.”
“I fear you do not understand, Serre Trigo,” Elayeen whispered. “Our eyes reveal to us that which is light and thus of nature’s making, and in so doing, that which is dark and thus not. The way ahead is all dark, and that is why we cannot now see the creature we were stalking.”
“It would require the wisdom of a wizard to make sense of the mist into which the creature fled,” Valin muttered.
The implication was clear. He may as well have announced that they were out of their depth, and at risk of drowning in circumstances far beyond their ken. But if anything, it strengthened Elayeen’s resolve, knowing as she did precisely how Gawain would react to such a statement were he the one leading them through this gloomy woodland and not she.
“Few are the whitebeards upon whom we may rely,” Elayeen asserted, reminding Valin of her husband’s opinion of wizards, “And none of those are to be found in Mornland. Ever have the people of Fourfields looked to themselves; the sticks they wield in field and forge are tools of their own making, of honest wood, neither shaped nor hardened by mystic fires and chanting. We shall advance, with our own eyes, and with theirs, and deal with what awaits us there.”
And blinking away the Sight, Elayeen strode forward, moving with quiet grace and great purpose, the rest following without the slightest hesitation.
Slowly, they drew closer to the centre, all of them studying the terrain around them, high and low as well as in all other directions. The vision they’d all seen of that beaked creature and its glistening, leathery wings haunted them, and spoke of danger from above in the boughs as well as on foot.
What it had been, they knew not. Whether once a living creature of nature consumed by the beast and its form thus available to be adopted, or whether a beast only of Morloch’s design, the purpose of its form had been self-evident; whether dead before being enveloped by the leathery shroud of those wings, or after, the end result would be the same. Perhaps Gillane had succumbed to it, the creature swooping on the hapless youth from above, ripping the boy open with the claws at its wing-tips before enveloping the carcass and feeding upon it. Or perhaps the boy had been deceived by a vision of naked loveliness padding barefoot from the tree line, eyes pleading, arms wide…
Ten yards from the wall of mist which eldeneyes struggled to penetrate, Elayeen stopped. The woodland ahead seemed no different than that behind them, tall trees forming a roughly circular glade thirty yards across, at the centre of which a single evergreen stood taller than all the other winter-bare trees encircling it. Silence. And no sign of badger, sheep, or wolf.
“Watch well,” Elayeen commanded. “It may have moved beyond our Sight to circle around us.”
Valin shifted as if to move forward again.
“Stand,” she commanded. “We are quite close enough to the darkness that dwells here.”
Valin eased back, fingers on his bowstring, ready to draw and loose the instant it became necessary.
Hearts pounded, eyes were wide and alert, and nothing moved in any direction around them. Silence, of course, save for the soft whispering of the breezes that seemed somehow vague, as if mumbling sibilant warnings from a distance, even the wind too frightened to approach the centre of the summit of Croptop Hill.
Something, Elayeen knew, was not as it should be, there beyond the unseen wall of mist. She summoned the Sight again, and the world before her again washed away in a fug of charcoal-grey. At its edges, the trees glowed faintly with their winter life-lights low. Further in, nothing, though at the very centre, where the evergreen stood proud and tall, the darkness seemed a little more intense, a little darker than the foggy surrounds.
She blinked and regarded that tree. Tall, of unremarkable girth, its bark healthy, while the trees around the periphery of the glade were blotched here and there with fungi and lichen. The woodland floor was all browns and greys of leaf litter, a soft carpet of debris unmarked by any recent passage of hoof, paw, foot or claw. Above them, noon yet an hour away, grey clouds hovered, inching gently towards the south in the breezes down from the mountains of the north, occasional breaks in the overcast making light and shadow sweep across the glade.
Elaye
en frowned, and looked down, and then up again, then around the glade once more, studying the trees and the ground around them. Her heart beat suddenly quicker.
“We are deceived,” she whispered. “This is no glade of nature’s making.”
“Deceived how?” Pahdreg gasped, frantically scanning for a target for his crossbow.
“Look yonder. The tree at the centre is too young to have dwelled all this time with its neighbours. They are marked by the passage of time, weathered, and host to mosses, fungi and lichen, it is not. The ground in the glade lies exposed to the light, yet no bracken grows, nor grasses, nor ferns. No green of any kind reaches for the light above.
“Listen, too. Hear the soft whispering of the breezes, yet the boughs of the evergreen do not stir, and whisper not. See the fallen leaves in the glade, and how none of them are moved. Our eyes are deceived. Even those of us forest-born are duped by some dark magic. Behold my arrow, and listen for its strike.”
With that, Elayeen tilted back on her hips, aiming high, and loosed a shaft towards the trunk of the tree, high up. They saw it flash white, but it did not strike the trunk, passing instead clean through and continuing on its way unseen and unheard towards the northwest.
“We stand on the edge of a circle, dark wizard-made or worse, and know not what lies within, looking out at us.”
“And what we do see now, friend Ranger?”
“May not be there at all, Pahdreg.”
“Must be summin’ there, young miss, or at least there were, when the line o’ men from Fourbanks passed this way all them years ago.”
“They described this place, then?”
Trigo shook his head, eyes flitting this way and that beneath the brim of his battered hat. “Not in so many words. Story says they formed a line at the south, and marched up and over the summit, and down the northern slope.”
