by James Fahy
The princess had bid them farewell up in the hidden city, and almost every dryad of the haven had turned out to watch the three companions leave on their mission, with only Splinterstem himself remaining with them now back on ground level.
He insisted on helping to track and hunt the scourge. To avenge the king.
He stood with Karya, who had dressed herself once more in her familiar travelling garb and was infinitely more normal-looking to Robin and Woad, buried in her huge coat of animal skins. She seemed far more comfortable, more herself. The two of them were examining tracks on the floor near the base of the chasm, while Robin and Woad stamped their feet in the cold morning mist, listening to the autumn leaves fall endlessly around them. Robin was rolling his mana stone over and over between his fingers, trying to remember every single combat cantrip he knew from the Towers of Air, Water and Earth. Woad was simply stretching and looking a little bleary-eyed.
“Hey look, Pinky,” he nudged Robin, pointing across the great gully back to the island of the elder trees. Robin followed his gaze. “That must be the entrance to the Labyrinth over there.”
Robin could indeed make out, nestled amongst the gargantuan roots, what looked to be a great stone archway. It was covered with vines and tangled roots, looking dark and disused, reminding Robin of pictures he had seen of Angkor Wat back in the human world, old stones completely overgrown. On either side of the dark stone doorway, there were hanging cages, man-sized, slung from the trees themselves.
“I was chatting to some of the dancers last night about the Labyrinth,” the faun went on. “That one who was feeding me grapes. She said those cages over there are where they used to imprison criminals. Bad dryads.” He sniggered. “Didn’t leave them there long or anything, just a day or two to teach them a lesson. She said the punishment of being so near to the horror of the minotaur and hearing its bellows was bad enough for most. Even if it couldn’t come out and get them.”
Robin thought this was a grisly idea, but he could see from the look of the empty, rusted cages, even from this distance, that they were clearly empty. No one had used them in a long time. Maybe just the threat of being put into one as punishment was deterrent enough.
“Why doesn’t it ever come out?” Robin wondered. It hadn’t occurred to him until now, why the creature wouldn’t just escape into the forest given half the chance. He couldn’t imagine it was a very nice life, guarding a dank and lightless underground maze.
“It can’t,” Woad said. “I asked that too. It’s chained up, see. Really long chain, mind, so it can move about, up and down the corridors, but not long enough for it to get anywhere near the entrance. It’s a prisoner there.” He wiggled his fingers in a playfully spooky way. “The dryads told me that those who spent the night in those cages came back with tales of hearing the horrible howls and bellows of the minotaur, and the dragging, constant clank of the chains as it lumbered around endlessly in the tunnels.” He grinned evilly. “A bone-chilling clank, a terrible clatter, the constant haunting music of the chains of the beast!”
Robin punched Woad lightly on the arm. “Cut it out, you moron,” he grinned.
“If you two have finished sightseeing,” Karya called. “We have found the freshest tracks, and I have cast a finding spell.” She kicked dirt over a pile of twigs on the floor which were still spinning lightly with her imbued mana. “The scourge is this way, I’m sure of it, and Splinterstem agrees. Let’s go slay a drake.”
*
The dryad led them deep into the primal woodland. They walked for hours through hills and valleys under an unbroken canopy of leaves, papery underbrush thick as snowdrifts through which they ploughed, sometimes thigh deep. The day was warm and bright for autumn and the sun, rising high as the day wore on, burned away the mist and fell here and there through the branches high ahead in slender bright beams. The forest was constantly in slumbering motion, filled with the endless drift of pollen, lending the quiet solitude of the wood a magical, dreamlike air. Robin found it difficult to believe that anything bad could be stalking these woods, whether a Shard-maddened monster or the swarm. It was a fairytale space, deep and wild and untamed.
It was also, he remembered, as they left Rowandeepling many miles behind, knackering.
The constant slog up and down hills, between the trees, clambering over knotted roots and under straggling ivy and vines, took its toll even on the seasoned hikers. By midday, Karya called a halt to their exploring.
“It’s nearby,” she said, in a low and careful voice.
"Really?" Robin said worriedly. "That was quicker than I expected."
Karya scowled at him. "I'm never wrong," she said, her golden eyes glimmering like the leaves around her. “Well, nearly never wrong. And any tracker could tell you that. Some of these trees are gouged, bark flaked, moss nearby flattened, and don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the smell.”
As they made a camp for lunch, sharing the now meagre rations they had left from Erlking, Robin couldn’t help but agree. The air in this part of the great forest was somehow richer, earthier, the petrichor freshness of newly-turned soil, the mulch of leaves, and the sharp, almost acidic tang of new cut grass. It smelled…alive.
“Anything?” she asked him, as they sat on the leaves in the hollow of a great trees roots, passing a waterskin between them. Robin’s hiking boots, much better for this terrain than his old battered trainers, had nevertheless begun to rub, as all new shoes do, and he was glad of the rest. He had taken one of them off and was shaking it upside down, getting rid of tiny stones from inside.
“Anything what?” he asked, confused.
“She wants to know if your Shard-senses are tingling,” Woad explained. “You are the Scion after all. Are you not getting a tingle in your waters, or whatever happens?”
Robin had to admit, he did have a strange sensation. It was nothing to do with his ‘waters’ or whatever the faun was blithering about, but the hairs on the back of his neck had been standing on end for the last couple of miles. He’d thought this might just be nerves.
“Maybe,” he said uncertainly. “Look, what is the actual plan when we find this thing? Do we even have one? I’ve never slain anything before. I mean, I know a few combat moves, but I think going in blind is a bad idea. We only have a sketchy idea what we’re up against.”
Karya nodded sagely. “Keep it simple, I thought,” she said. “Splinterstem and I will use Earth magic to try and hamper it as much as possible, maybe root it to the floor if we can, try and keep it in one place,” She pointed at the faun. “Woad, you do what you do best and cause a distraction.” Woad nodded eagerly, cracking his knuckles. “And then you, Scion, rush in and take the Shard from it.”
“How do you expect me to do that?” Robin wanted to know. Karya shrugged.
“We’ll have to play it by ear,” she admitted. “In the past, the Arcania has wanted to come to you, it’s almost like it yearns for you. On the floating island, the Shard shot over the room and literally stabbed into you, right? And in the sunken tomb, the second Shard sucked you into its watery tornado so you could get it. I’m hoping the same thing will happen here. Thought there might be more of a struggle as it’s already been claimed.”
Robin didn’t feel this was a very solid plan for them all to risk their lives over, and said so. Karya pointed out that no one else had any better ideas, and he couldn’t really argue with that.
“Do you think we should be concerned about this ‘pale hooded man’?” he asked, as they set off again. “Splinterstem said there were strange things in the Elderhart, before the beast ever showed up. Not only trouble with the swarm, increased skirmishes or whatever, but this oddball wandering around. He might have been the one who went into the minotaur’s lair and got the Shard out. The one who woke up the monster we’re hunting right now.”
Karya agreed this pale wanderer was an unknown factor, and they should certainly be on the lookout for anyone of that description, but they had so little to go on, it wa
sn’t something they could devote much time to worrying about.
At mid-afternoon, they reached a part of the forest which was reasonably level, a deep and wide bowl of a valley which cut between high wooded hills on either side. The tall dryad suddenly stopped dead, hand raised to halt the others.
“What is it?” Karya whispered. The woods around them were quiet and hushed. The occasional falling leaf the only movement.
“Listen,” the dryad said. “Do you hear?”
Robin, like the others, strained to hear anything. There seemed only the rhythmic rush of the wind, high above them in the trees, and he looked at his companions in confusion.
“I hear it,” Woad whispered excitedly. And a moment later, Robin did too.
Hiding beneath the sound of the wind, matching it in waves, rising and falling, there was a deep and distant breathing, some great creature.
“And look,” Karya pointed away between the tree trunks. Some way off to their right, there was a natural break in the valley wall, where the crumbling mossy hill was broken and a gorge of sorts, half hidden by leaves and tangled branches, made a form of tunnel. Bare jagged limestone poked through the earth like old bone through green flesh, and the grass and leaves around it seemed withered and grey.
“The mark of the scourge,” the dryad said. “It sucks the life from the forest wherever it goes.”
Robin listened to the loud, heavy breathing. He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that beyond that narrow pass between the wooded cliffs, the creature they hunted lay. He felt it in every quivering fibre of his being.
Karya raised cupped hands to her mouth and whispered something to herself. When she opened her hands, dozens of tiny green fireflies fluttered from her palms, little guiding lights. They watched as this slim, glinting tide weaved away through the trees, disappearing into the crevasse of gnarled trees.
“We've found it,” she hissed to her companions. “Finding spell. Basic Earth mana. Come on.”
They advanced cautiously through the trees toward the gap, taking care not to step in deep leaves that may rustle and give them away. As they closed in, and the grass beneath their feet became dry and coarse, sucked clean of life and vitality, the sound of the heavy breathing became clearer, long and slow, and huge.
“The heart of the forest must be retrieved,” Splinterstem told them, grabbing Karya by the arm. His green eyes were bright and hard. “It must not be damaged or hurt. It must be taken back to Rowandeepling. All depends on it.”
“Understood.” Karya shook him off rather impatiently. “That’s what we’re here for.”
They passed cautiously into the hollow, Robin somehow finding himself in the lead. His heart was pounding, his mana stone pulsing against his chest, matching it with a second beat. The autumn day was golden but had grown cold. Yet even so, he felt sweat trickle between his shoulder blades with nerves.
Beyond the gap, through a screen of tree branches which were completely dead, white and petrified, the forest opened up into a sunken glade. Everything here in this low bowl of land was dead. The ground was grey and bare, what grass there remained was crisp and dry. The leafless trees were pale and blasted, or blackened and scorched. All seemed ash and dust and desolation. Deep in the blighted hollow, where the ground rose up in a high rugged hump, there was a cave, wide, jagged and dark, and filling its mouth was the beast itself.
“It is a bloody dragon,” Robin found himself whispering urgently, almost against his will. “I knew it would be a bloody dragon. It’s a big bloody dragon.”
Only the head of the enormous drake was visible, the rest of the great creature evidently lost in the darkness of the cave behind it. This vast, lizardlike countenance rested on the forest floor, amidst the dry and withered grass, and it was truly immense. A skull easily the size of a large car, draconian and wild. The drake was a deep, sage green, scaled and rough looking, and along its face, in ridges beneath its eyes, and in great curls above its strangely equine brow, long grey horns sprouted. It seemed positively vibrant against the grey of its surroundings, a thick beard of tangled green moss cushioning its snout on the dead, dusty earth. Stones seemed embedded between its scales, riverbed-round and flecked with sparkling mica. It was the forest incarnate.
Like the earth-lions they had rode, out on the grasslands, the scourge of the Elderhart was made, it seemed, of earth and tree and soil and leaf. Only on a far greater scale.
A wild and dangerous spirit of the woods, abundant with life and fertility, resting amidst the desolation it had wrought.
Of primary interest to all of them however, was the shining diamond-shaped glow which emanated from the drake’s huge forehead. It was emerald green, a jewel as sharp and long as a sword blade, and embedded in the forest-dragon like a third eye. It shimmered and pulsed with such a raw energy that to look directly at it made their eyes water, made them feel as though they were being pulled slightly from their sockets.
Robin had been so entranced by the sight, feeling oddly mesmerised by it, that he felt the Puck stir deep within him, curiosity raised, and he was clear of the trees and halfway down the slope of the deadly hollow before he realised it. Stopped only by the frantic hisses of his companions.
“Scion!” Karya snapped from the bushes, desperately keeping her voice low. “What are you doing?! Get back here, you idiot!”
“Pinky, you’ll be eaten!” Woad agreed, peering from behind the skeletal branches at the top of the rise.
Robin blinked in confusion, feeling as though he had been sleepwalking. He had no real memory of leaving the others and walking slowly down the slope. The Puck had risen and taken over. His eyes were drawn by the Shard, that great glimmering emerald in the skull of the nightmarish beast before them. His own eyes itched, and he blinked rapidly, determined to regain control. He had no doubt that the Puck had moved him. It wanted the Shard, and the Shard wanted him. There was no question of danger. He would as readily have walked blindly into a hungry lion’s cage.
Robin shook his head forcefully, squeezing his eyes closed. He had no doubt that they were as green and bright as the Shard. His hair probably white as milk. The Puck rose like gorge in his throat and Robin forced himself to swallow mentally, pushing the power back down. He would not lose control, he told himself. It was as Karya had said. He was the Puck. It was a part of him. He could control it. He had to learn how.
It was insanity, walking down into the hollow, into the mouth of the great sleeping drake, but the draw of the Shard was so strong. It sang in his bones, a vibrating music, impossible to resist.
Karya motioned frantically for him to return “You’re going to–”
A blast of hot air from the nostrils of the huge animal rolled over Robin, blowing his hair back from his forehead, and he halted, shocked. With a gargantuan rumble of motion, the large head ponderously lifted from the ground, shaking loose a small avalanche of scree, which fell to the ground with a clatter. Its head turned to the side, an ancient dinosaur built from bark and earth, and its hoary, snake-like eye, as large as Robin himself, flicked open.
“… wake it,” Karya finished weakly.
The eye was orange, as bright and fiery as a setting autumn sun. The vertical pupil took in Robin, a milky inner lid sliding over its jewelled surface, and it contracted to a thin slit. As Robin stumbled backwards, the great drake opened its mouth wide, revealing an alarmingly large red maw, filled with teeth as long as swords, and it roared.
The noise deafened them all, shaking the trees, causing a flurry of leaves to dislodge from the forest canopy above and rain down on the hollow in a snow of red and yellow flakes. Stones and pebbles jumped and danced like popping corn kernels in a hot pan, and the great scourge lumbered out of the cave, dragging its moss-covered body thunderously across the ground.
Robin scrambled quickly to his feet, his hands scuffed with mud. He was dimly aware of Karya and Woad leaping down into the depression to join him, both slipping and sliding on a small wave of leaves. Woad was shoutin
g something. Karya’s mana stone bracelet flashed like amber lightning as she built her mana, preparing to cast. But Robin was transfixed by the huge and commanding creature in front of him.
It wasn’t a snake, as some had said, though its body, emerging from the cave in long coils was snakelike, long and scaled and sinuous. Its sides and flanks were covered with moss and patchy grass, and along its long back there grew a spine of sharp and jagged rocks, a stegosaurus. But this long snake had legs, powerful claws digging into the soft earth beneath as it dragged itself forward, tearing up the ground as it reared above Robin, never once taking its fury-filled eye off the boy.
It looked to him like a Chinese dragon. There had been parades, back when he had lived in the city with Gran, every Chinese New Year, and people would dress up, forming a conga line of sorts under a long and curious dragon body of silk panels, weaving and undulating through the streets to cheers of the crowds which lined the pavements, dancing along to powerful banging drums and the clash of cymbals. Robin had a clear memory of going to see the spectacle as a young boy and he had found the street dragon terrifying and mesmeric at the same time, with its bobbing, wide-mawed head and large wild eyes. This was the same. The creature in the grove coiled and weaved sinuously, leaves falling from its sides in flurries. It filled his immediate future.
“Don’t just stand there like a lemon!” Karya yelled, suddenly at his side. She dropped to the ground and thrust her arms into the soil, coat flying out behind her. Beneath the beast, the floor bucked and writhed, and suddenly, from a hundred points, the earth erupted. Strong vines, thicker than a man’s waist, shot out from the ground, green and snaking. With a shower of soil, the countless tendrils coursed up into the air around the drake, cracking like powerful whips as they arced through the sunbeams. Waving green tentacles, they flew in every direction, wrapping around the huge creature, falling over its bucking sides and plunging back into the earth, burrowing deep. Karya’s eyes glowed, golden fire, and sweat was standing on her forehead, arms still thrust into the soil to her elbows, as she drew the net of creaking vines tighter. A binding spell. She was trying to pin the beast to the ground, to catch it in a net of vegetation.
