Chains of Gaia

by James Fahy

  “I don’t really understand,” Robin admitted, with raised eyebrows.

  “You gotta show them who’s boss!” Woad piped up, giving Robin a thumbs up from his high perch.

  Jackalope smirked and leaned back against the rock behind him, clasping his hands behind his head. “Unlikely,” he said. “The Scion here probably cares about the rock's feelings too much.”

  Hawthorn indicated a small boulder sitting in the long grass, not too far off.

  “Try it,” he insisted. “Focus your mana, form your command before you cast, and be very, very certain that it will be obeyed. So certain that the very idea that it won’t be obeyed is unthinkable to you. Cast a golem cantrip. Make it move.”

  Feeling very self-conscious with all eyes on him, Robin nodded, and fished out his seraphinite mana stone from beneath his t-shirt. He clasped it in one hand, holding out his other arm towards the rock, and focussed, trying to clear his mind.

  He mustered all of his willpower, blocking out everything else, reminding himself that he was the Scion. That he had communion with two of the Shards of the Arcania. If anyone could command the earth, it should be him.

  He silently shouted at the rock to move, feeling a thrum of mana pulse invisibly out from his palm like the shockwave of a banged drum. He cast the golem cantrip with as much force as he could muster.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the rock shudder a little, like a shivering dog. It didn’t move an inch however.

  Jackalope laughed and clapped his hands.

  “Priceless!” he cried, shaking his head at Robin's expense, as Robin's cheeks flushed crimson with embarrassment. “And this is the saviour of the known world? Beware the great Scion of Erlking!”

  “Hush up, meanie,” Woad called down sharply. But Jackalope seemed intent.

  “Redeemer of the Netherworlde! Wobbler of small rocks. They shall call you the stone-trembler.”

  Unbidden, Robin’s embarrassment flared into anger, rising suddenly up from deep within him quite unexpectedly. His teeth clenched, and his head was filled with such a fury at the cynical Fae. Why couldn’t he ever say anything nice? After all they had done for him, and all he could do was mock and sneer and scowl. Someone ought to wipe the smile off his face.

  A thought, only half-formed, was in Robin’s head. To cast golem at the stone against which Jackalope leaned. How funny it would be to make it move, to roll away from him so that the boy fell flat on his back. That would teach him a lesson. Who’d be embarrassed then? It would serve him right, the sly, selfish-

  Robin’s hand was moving before he even really noticed it, Jackalope’s laughter still in his ears through the haze of anger. He threw out his arm, intending only to cast Golem again, with all his might.

  Instead, to his horror, and the shock of Hawthorn, a deep blast of thick darkness roared from his palm, a jet of powerful shadow, filled with grit and rolling stones, grinding noisily. It arced over the fire, scattering the flames in sparks and flashes, and descended on Jackalope like a bolt of black lightning. The Fae, acting on instinct, ducked the blast at the last second, his silver eyes wide and shocked. The blast hit the rock behind him, which exploded into countless tiny fragments with a deafening boom and a huge cloud of dust.

  Woad shrieked in alarm, as the shuddering explosion rolled out in a shockwave, bending the long grass outwards all around them. He leapt from the shelter where he was perched, just as it too exploded to fine grit, along with every other rock, large and small, in the hollow of their camp. They set off all around them, bursting like fireworks, as the dark angry jet of mana dissipated with a hiss.

  Horrified, Robin fell backwards, staring at his own shaking hands in disbelief. The anger had gone, as swiftly as it had come, leaving him feeling empty and hollowed out. His skin, he saw, was white, almost glowing.

  “Filius Canis! What are you trying to do?!” Jackalope yelled, scrambling furiously to his feet. Phorbas was in his hand. He was covered in dust and grit. “You madman! Are you trying to kill me?”

  Robin opened and closed his mouth a few times. “I…I didn’t mean…” he started. The words came out strangely. They didn’t sound like his usual voice. There was a whisper beneath them, two voices talking at once. The other, Robin knew, was the Puck.

  “Can't you even take a joke?” Jackalope shouted, still shaking with shock.

  “Jackalope, be still,” Hawthorn said. He had gotten to his feet also, his hair full of grit and rock dust. Small stones still rained down around them all, falling like volcanic pumice and pinging off his horns. He was staring at Robin in surprise and open wonder. “Look at his face, he didn’t intend…”

  “I don’t care what he intended,” Jackalope pointed the knife at Robin. “You! You need to learn to control your temper. You’re not safe to be around!”

  Robin could tell by the way Hawthorn and Woad were staring at him that he didn’t look himself. He knew what they were seeing. White hair, cold skin and bright green eyes. Robin could still feel the mana rushing though his body like adrenalin. It was intoxicating, like a powerful wind. He swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing the palms of his hands against them. Willing himself to calm, to push the Puck back down deep inside. To make his eyes blue again. Go away…go away…just…let me be me again.

  Around his head he could feel the breeze of the Netherworlde night toying around horns that were not there.

  “Just…I didn’t mean to…give me a moment..” he managed out loud.

  “It seems the Scion has no shortage of mana,” Hawthorn said at length, his voice careful and thoughtful as he surveyed the devastation around them. “Although maybe a little more mana-control would be desirable.”

  “That was Darkness again, Pinky.” Woad had appeared in front of Robin, crouched on the floor before him. He took Robin’s hands in his own small blue ones, and pulled them gently away from his eyes. “Mixed with Earth.”

  The faun was searching Robin's eyes, looking a little worried. The dust was settling all around them in clouds. Woad smiled tightly.

  “See? All better now. Blue eyes are back. Just a slip. Like unexpected bubbles in the bath. Can’t be helped sometimes,” he sniggered.

  “Just a slip?” Jackalope sheathed his knife, brushing scree and gravel from his shoulders. He still looked shaken and furious. “You have no control. You’re like a bomb waiting to explode!”

  “I’ve been taking extra mana-management classes,” Robin said, looking to Hawthorn. He felt a desperate need to explain, how he was filled with this strange other self. “It’s…there’s something in me. A darkness. The sisters saw it. They were right.”

  “Sisters?” Hawthorn enquired.

  “Spooky Morai” Woad explained, letting Robin’s hands go as both of them stood. “All dusty lace and doom-speak. You know how some of these soothsayers are. Though they did make silver top here cough up a big bug, so I guess they weren’t all bad.”

  Hawthorn looked deeply confused, but Jackalope cut in before either Robin or Woad could explain further.

  “I don’t know what your problem is,” he said, grabbing his pack off the floor and hoisting it onto his shoulders. “But I’m not staying around to find out. I saved you in the snow, you saved me at Erlking. We’re even, like you said. I came to the Netherworlde with you but this is as far as it goes. That was always the plan anyway. I’m leaving.”

  “You’re really leaving?” Robin said. “To go where? We’re in the middle of nowhere, on our own.”

  “I’m used to that,” the older boy replied sharply.

  “You're a big bag of wind, hornstumps,” Woad said testily to the tall boy. “If you stopped sulking and feeling sorry for yourself for just one minute, you would see that you need us.”

  “Need you?” Jackalope scoffed, his eyebrows disappearing into his hair. “Me, need you? I need to get thrown across a room and slammed into a wall? I need to get almost blown to pieces by this maniac? I don’t think so.”

  “Everyone needs
people,” Woad said insistently. “Even annoying, selfish ones. We all occasionally nearly blow each other up…so what.” He shrugged as if this happened every day. “That’s what friends do.”

  “I don’t need friends like you,” the Fae replied. “Really. And you don’t need friends like me.”

  “You think you’re not good enough for us,” Robin said with sudden conviction. Jackalope froze, his pack half on his shoulders.

  “It’s true. You’re all spiky edges and snide insults, but it’s all one big act,” Robin continued. “You think you don’t deserve to be happy, or safe, and you’re too afraid to even admit it to yourself.”

  Jackalope glared so furiously at Robin that it seemed inevitable that he was about to lunge and take a swing, but he just sighed down his nose, his lips pressed together in a thin line.

  “You are an idiot, Robin Fellows. And even worse, you think you’re one of the good guys.”

  “I am,” Robin said. “Or at least I try.”

  “Well…” Jackalope turned away. “I’m not. No matter how much you and the other knights of the gossamer-winged table want me to be… Farewell, Scion.”

  He made to walk away, but the old man raised a hand.

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option right now,” Hawthorn said. He was looking off toward the top of the hollow, where the pale skies were beginning to bleed with lemon yellow and salmon pink as the sun prepared to rise. The three boys looked at him curiously. He was standing very still, his eyes roaming the edge of the hollow they camped in, leaning on his bow and sniffing the air.

  “I’m afraid our little magical mishap just now may have drawn some unwanted attention. We all need to leave…right now.”

  Following his lead, they scrambled stealthily up the grassy hillside, out of the dell, now strewn with shattered rocks, Woad kicking dirt over their tiny campfire as they left.

  “What do you mean?” Robin asked. He felt rather dizzy and jelly-legged after his puckish outburst.

  “What kind of attention?” Jackalope asked.

  “There!” Hawthorn, cresting the hill, dropped suddenly into a crouch, dragging the boys down with him on either side. The grass up here was longer, and damp with morning dew.

  The land before them was thinner of trees. There were long undulating hills, studded with the occasional rocky outcrop. They rolled away under the pre-dawn sky. Silhouetted against one of these outcrops, some way off was, what at first glance Robin took to be, a large pale horse. But as it turned, he saw that its pallid muscular torso blended into that of a man’s, white as milk and long armed. It carried a wicked looking spear, and atop its head, a long freakish looking helmet, pyramidical in design, so that it resembled the long muzzle of a horse.

  “A centaur!” Woad hissed in alarm.

  “Has it seen us?” Robin asked, his heart pounding. He had encountered these creatures before, in the war camps of the Grimms far in the snowy north. They were violent, brutish and vicious. Part horse, part stag, part human in appearance, but not a shred of humanity within. The bloodthirsty war horses of Eris.

  “Undoubtedly,” Hawthorn whispered. “At the very least it will have heard your little mana-tantrum just now, and cannot have failed to have seen the smoke and dust. It is a scout.”

  “Mana-trum,” Woad giggled quietly to himself. Robin shushed him.

  “A scout for others. But how many?” Jackalope cursed.

  “They travel by herd,” Hawthorn said. As he spoke, the distant centaur suddenly reared up on its great hind legs, rolling its forelegs in the air against the sky. It threw back its nightmarish head and shook its spear in the air, uttering a bellowing call, part scream and part roar.

  “And it has found our scent!” Hawthorn hissed. He dragged the boys to their feet and turned, setting off through the long grass as the creature leapt down from the rocks and galloped away, disappearing behind two hills.

  “Hurry! All of you! We have to get to clear ground, out onto the grasslands proper, away from the trees. It has gone to fetch the herd.”

  They ran along behind him, panic rising in Robin as his satchel bounced on his back.

  “Away from the trees? Shouldn’t we be hiding in the trees? We’ll be completely exposed otherwise!” Robin gasped, struggling to keep up. Hawthorn was fast.

  “They’ll sniff us out,” he called back, dismissing the idea immediately. “Then we’ll be trapped, skewered on spears.”

  “As opposed to being run down and trampled,” Jackalope said. “Is this a preferable fate? We’re never going to be able to outrun them. Not in the open! I don’t know if you noticed, old man, but they have more legs that we do.”

  A thunderous noise came from the distance, far off, but growing. Robin, despite a small voice in his head telling him it was a very bad idea, risked a glance behind them.

  The sun had breached the horizon, turning the sky to blood and fire as it rose, and pouring over the distant hills came a herd of centaur. Twenty … no closer to thirty of them, Robin guessed as he scanned the hillside. They flew down the grassy slope like water.

  “They haven’t seen us yet!” Woad said encouragingly. “They have our scent, but the gap is too great. Centaurs are not the best with eyesight, nothing like a faun, but they have noses like bloodhounds. The grass is long.”

  “But they’re going to close the gap!” Robin argued. “They’re headed this way. Where are we running to?”

  “I feel the ‘from’ is more important than the ‘to’, at the present time,” Hawthorn replied. “And we only need enough distance that I can stop for a moment.”

  “Stop?” yelled Jackalope, crashing through the grass at Robin’s side, their shadows elongated before them in the light of the rising sun as they ran. “Are you completely insane?”

  “Debatable,” the Fae responded. “But if we can find a clear enough space, I’ve a way we can outrun them, at least for a while. We can make for the nearest safe place.”

  “Safe place?” Robin gasped, out of breath.

  “Briar Hill,” Hawthorn explained. “Stop talking and run.”

  “Briar Hill …” Woad pointed out, crashing through the long grass. “… is not a safe place! It is a haunted and cursed place!”

  “Woad,” Robin gasped, watching the small blue creature dart ahead like a swift rabbit as the thunder of the centaur herd grew louder behind them. “Right now, it sounds better than here!”

  EQUIS TERRAE

  “Stop!” Hawthorn panted. “This will do.” They had erupted from a small copse of trees into open ground, the last of the sparse shelter behind them.

  High, undulating moorland, blanketed with tall yellow grass stretched out before them, golden in the rising sun. The hills seemed to stretch on forever, rising to distant smoky shadows on the far horizon which looked like cliffs and quarries.

  Jackalope and Robin almost barrelled straight into the back of the suddenly stationary man. Woad scampered past, propelled by momentum, a small blue streak of energy.

  “Here? What? There’s nothing here!” Jackalope panted.

  Robin glanced behind. He couldn’t see much through the trees, but the sound of the centaurs' hooves was a distant thunder. He could feel it vibrate through the soles of his shoes.

  “They’re coming,” he gasped, nursing a stitch. “They’re fast.”

  Woad had stopped, scanning the horizon. His sudden eruption into the open grasslands had started a multitude of tiny birds and they rose before him in their thousands, a black, scattered cloud, cawing and complaining. Robin watched them fill the sky, wheeling in great swooping arcs, arabesques of living smoke dancing in the sky against the crimson heavens. He had seen something like this on television once with Gran. One of the nature programmes she liked to watch. Starlings they were called, he remembered. They massed and danced like this back in the human world too. People would travel for miles to see them do it.

  It would have been more relaxing had the imminent probability of being trampled or speared
by monsters not been more pressing on his mind. The sight of the birds however, and their majestic, cacophonous dance against the wild, open skies, made Robin's heart hurt unexpectedly. In that moment, he simply wanted his Gran back. He would have given anything to be in the lounge of the small bungalow, his dinner on a tea tray on his knees as he sat beside her on the lumpy old sofa watching starlings on TV, filtered through the calming voice of David Attenborough.

  Hawthorn was peering at him oddly, as though he sensed his strange emotions.

  “Scion,” he said. Robin couldn’t draw his eyes away from the birds, scattering now, their vast cloud sweeping out and away across the horizon. “Robin,” Hawthorn said, softer.

  The boy dragged his eyes from the sky and looked at the Fae. “Are they going to catch us?” he asked. What he really wanted to say was ‘are we going to die’, but he felt superstitiously as though saying this out loud would make it too real.

  “Not today,” Hawthorn said firmly. “No son of Wolfsbane is falling to centaurs while in my care. Your father would never forgive it.”

  He stuck his longbow into the ground, forcefully, driving the sharp tip into the soil. “All of you, come close to me. Stand here, at this spot."

  They gathered close to Hawthorn uncertainly. He set off, dragging the bow behind him, scoring a deep groove in the soil, leaving them to watch in confusion as his thin limbs carried him around in a graceful arc.

  “Stay within this circle,” he said, pointing to the rough depression he had just made. “Don’t break it.”

  “What are you doing?” Jackalope asked.

  “A cantrip, Earth magic. But very powerful, so I need more mana than I have. I’m going to use yours too.”

  “Ours?” Woad said. “Like … a mana-cocktail?”

  “Exactly.” Hawthorn moved to the middle of the circle, dropping into a crouch and planting both hands firmly on the ground. He wriggled his fingers into the long grass, worming them into the soil.

  “I don’t have a mana-stone,” Jackalope argued. “I don’t do magic, remember?” He waggled Phorbas. “Just stabbing.”