The Tome of Arbor (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 9)

by M. R. Mathias

  Vanx saw her, and was glad that he hadn’t cut her in half as he’d feared. He must have cut the tendril for there were a few purple splotched green leaves and some sappy looking goo near the elf.

  Vanx thought she might be dead, but he held out hope and poked her with the Glaive of Gladiolus.

  “Yah,” he heard Chelda shout in victory.

  He had never been happier to see anything when Moonsy’s eyelids fluttered open.

  The elf reached out and grabbed one of the leaves. She seemed transfixed by the strange pattern. Vanx looked at a leaf more closely. It was like any other light green, heart shaped viny leaf, only these looked to have been splattered with lavender and plum dye.

  “Pretty,” she mumbled. Then she got to her feet, recast her light spell, and called for her lover.

  “Are you all right, Chel?” she asked.

  “Yah, I am,” Chelda responded. “Come look at this.”

  Vanx could tell that whatever it was had Chelda amazed. It had to be extra spectacular for Gallarael to stay silent about it. Or maybe she was still in her partially formed hide?

  Vanx decided it didn’t matter and followed Moonsy through the archway to see what they’d discovered. He wasn’t ready for what hit him. Only the fact that Poops darted in a few seconds before he did, kept him from being overwhelmed by it all.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Four

  Cold words cut like a knife,

  sharp and hard, they’ll steal a life.

  They’ll tear a heart open wide,

  and leave nothing left but pain inside.

  – Broken, a Zythian ballad

  A massive forest spread out before them. Over the potent smell of pollen and vegetation, the smell of brine and jacaranda bells filled his and Poops’s nostrils. In the far distance, Vanx could see the ocean and, by the lay of the land, he figured they were back in the section of the island where they’d come ashore.

  He was amazed. It had to have been some sort of portal. He saw the remains of the plant that had reached in and gotten hold of Poops and Moonsy, and he shook his head. The idea that something rooted out here could reach inside the arch was hard to conceive, but it had just happened.

  And where was here? he wondered. The dragon’s lazing stone wasn’t behind them. They hadn’t just stepped out of the strange building. They were standing in an ancient looking archway, built atop an elevated clearing.

  Vanx had to give it to whoever created such a passage, they picked an amazing vantage point, with a breathtaking view, to do it.

  “What is that?” he wondered aloud. He could see tiny streamers in the sky with something attached at the bottom. They were drifting in the air. The wind carried some toward them, but they were moving lazily, as if they might never come down.

  “Look over there,” Chelda said. “What are they doing? What are they?”

  Vanx watched as one of the streamers, then another, landed in the branches of a tree across the valley. Slowly, the leaves of a branch were clouded, and then browned.

  Then Vanx saw one of them drifting down at them. He was stricken with fear when he saw what they were. It was one of the baby red spiders. They were all drifting on the wind on stringers of web as long as his arm.

  A few more moments of panicked looking confirmed his assessment of where they were, for the jacaranda tree could be made out, its top poking over one of three ridges that lay between them and the sea. The spiders sparked away in hot sizzling pops when they drifted too close to it, but Vanx sensed pain coming from the tree, pain from where the sea breeze came over the ridge, stripping its leaves and burning its bark.

  What had he done? The jacaranda tree might not have supposed to been released here. Now, more than ever, he needed to know what the book said.

  “Do not let them land on us!” Vanx warned. “Those are the ones that almost killed Zeezle. I must have launched them out of that tube when I blasted their mother.”

  The phenomenon happened a little closer to them this time. A spider’s streamer caught in a branch, and the spider quickly started constructing a web. The silk cocoons weren’t that big, just enough to cover a dozen leaves or so, but those leaves quickly turned brown, and this was happening in thousands of places across the forest. It was as if cottony balls were blooming, then browning, all around them.

  The place on his hand where he thought he’d been bitten itched, but still he saw no mark or even any redness other than that caused by his scratching.

  As he gathered himself and pondered the situation, Vanx heard Chelda gasp in concern, and he turned.

  She was looking at him with terror in her eyes.

  Vanx felt Poops, then. The dog was hurting on his right forepaw, just about where Vanx had been scratching.

  Poops wobbled and fell over. Vanx drew the glaive and stabbed the dog. This seemed to help, but only for a time. Vanx understood, this. The poison was still in Poops, so even after the glaive healed him, the poison would start taking effect all over again. The dog needed a real healing spell.

  “The hawks, are not responding, Vanx.” Moonsy’s sadness seemed to have returned tenfold. He doubted she knew Poops was hurt.

  “Cast a protection to keep the drifting spiders off us, and keep Poops alive with the glaive while you work a proper healing. I’ll try to call the hawks.” Vanx grabbed the Hoar Witch’s crystal dangling at his neck and reached out to the remaining two great hawks.

  Something responded to his call, but it was that strange coral colored wyrm, he was sure of it.

  “They aren’t there, or—” He sighed. “We need to go straight to the coast, I can call the Adventurer to meet us.” He pointed in a direction opposite the newly formed Heart Tree.

  Maybe a half-day’s hike away was what looked like a sandy beach.

  “Poops is not well,” the elf said, but he has no bite. “I’m not sure what to do.”

  “Heal him,” Vanx said a little more sharply than he intended.

  Moonsy did her best, then she spent a long time casting protective and defensive wards on the whole group.

  “Rest yourselves—” Vanx was interrupted as one of the drifting spiders came in contact with Monsy’s protective spell and sizzled away.

  Vanx decided that he could wait to get back on the ship to sleep, and poor Poops wasn’t getting worse, but the dog wasn’t feeling any better either. “Never mind. Moonsy, you keep the glaive out for Poops. I’ll carry him. No doubt we will have to return to right the wrong I must have done here.” Vanx grunted as he heaved Poops up to his chest. It was disheartening to see all the webs in the trees now. They were everywhere.

  “We need to find out what this book says before we do anything else.” Vanx started down. “We need to understand it all.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  Anytime I’m fishing,

  and my line is in the water.

  Nothing really matters,

  but the bobble of my bobber.

  – A fisherman’s song

  As they made their way through the forest, Vanx wondered about the bite. He was sure he’d seen something bite him, but the effect happened to his familiar. Or maybe Poops had been bitten, and Vanx felt the bite. What he saw might have been a flake of dried ink from the inkpot.

  He knew he had to start practicing the spells he’d learned from the Hoar Witch’s books. After his Goddess implied it wasn’t the nature of a spell, but the intention of its using that mattered, he was less reserved about casting them. Right now, though, he was mostly concerned with keeping his dog alive. Poops was getting better, and the swelling going down, but he still wasn’t healed. Vanx could feel his four-legged friend’s unease, but at the moment, Poops wanted off the island as much as he’d ever wanted anything.

  Vanx and Chelda took turns carrying the dog, and they made the beach just as the sun left half a moon in the sky to light their way.

  By the time they reached the beach, Ronzon, and more likely, the magical Adventurer, herself
, had made their way around the shoreline to greet them.

  For a few moments, they all stood there on the beach, looking at each other.

  “There is no rowboat,” Chelda observed.

  “It’s called a longboat, or a dinghy,” Vanx corrected.

  “Do you think I care what it is called?” Chelda barked.

  “I bet you a gold piece you’ll say longboat or dinghy next time,” he joked through an icy cold sweat, and he knew she would.

  “Moonsy, can you get us over there?” Vanx handed Poops off to Chelda, and patted the shoulder satchel he’d been using to carry the old book with. “We wouldn’t want this to get wet,” he reminded.

  The next thing he knew he was landing on the deck of his ship, his dog familiar and Chelda right beside him as his knees hit the deck wood, hard.

  Gallarael followed, then Moonsy appeared.

  The Adventurer didn’t wait for a command, sails unfurled, and rigging snapped tight of its own accord. It knew they were headed for the Isle of Zyth.

  Vanx carried Poops down to their quarters and sat him in the bed. The dog licked him in thanks, but looked miserable. Vanx asked Ronzon to make some broth from the bouillon they’d stocked, and a lot of it. Ronzon was happy to, for Chelda was in the galley eating everything she could, and Ronzon knew she’d tell him what happened on the island.

  Vanx used the glaive as he had on Zeezle, stabbing Poops every few minutes until the swelling went away. It was odd to Vanx that pus and webby stuff hadn’t oozed out of a bite hole the way Zeezle’s wound had healed. It was then that Vanx decided that neither he nor the dog had been bitten by one of the red spiders, but maybe something else. He also decided he was feeling the same sickly feeling his familiar was, only he had mistaken it for spell weariness, or maybe it was a combination of spell weariness and some sort of venom or poison. Whatever it was, the glaive and Moonsy’s spells didn’t fully heal it.

  Vanx felt better by morning, but he and Poops were holding close to each other through their familiar link because they both knew something wasn’t right.

  The next afternoon, a storm rolled in, so everyone was below, in the galley. It barely fit them all. In fact, it didn’t. Chelda was sitting on the stairs that led up to the main deck, looking in as she told an emphatic tale.

  Vanx had opened a pony keg of good rum and listened as Chelda told Ronzon, again, all they had been through.

  As he guessed, Chelda didn’t sugarcoat the events or how they unfolded, but to Vanx’s surprize, Moonsy didn’t wince, or even show emotion, when the parts about Anitha being munched by the dragon and the strange disappearance of the great hawks were told.

  Vanx had a nagging feeling in the back of his skull. He hoped they could get back in time to save all those trees from the spider webbings. After all, it was he who had blasted all the little spiders out of a borehole, like a buffoon. He made to scratch at his hand and found he’s scraped it deep enough that there was now a scab.

  He looked at it curiously and thought about the clay inkwell falling to the floor. The way it shattered. The dullness of the thud. And then he heard Chelda’s sudden silence. He looked at the others and they had followed her eyes to rest on him.

  She must have asked me a question, Vanx thought, right before he fell face first into the end of the table.

  Vanx opened his eyes to the hovering concern on the faces of three beautiful women. His dog was already beside him. He felt fine, but he knew he’d been sweating.

  “I poked you with the glaive Vanx, and it hasn’t helped much,” Moonsy said. “Too bad we don’t have a few Medika’s here to ease your symptoms. As uncomfortable as you and Poops look, according to the glaive, you are well.”

  Chelda, who stooped and used the wall the stay balanced as the ship pitched and rolled with the sea, gave Vanx a look of concern he’d rarely ever seen on her. In fact, the last time he’d seen her expression so serious was when she was in her home village, around her father.

  “I saw a spider on you Vanx,” she said. “A little tiny one, with some blue stripes on its back.”

  “When?” Vanx asked.

  Gallarael leaned down and gave him a kiss, and then she rolled her eyes Chelda’s way. The look indicated the gargan might be a little confused. “She says she saw it when we stepped out of that dragonstone, and again the other day, right before you banged your head on the table.”

  “The other day?” Vanx sat up and immediately regretted it. He felt Poops urging him to lay down. Their familiar link was growing stronger and stronger. “How long have I—?”

  “Two full nights, and this is the third evening.” She smiled when he resettled himself. He missed her golden hair and, for a moment or two, he wondered what might have happened had her lover Trevin survived the ogre war in Dyntalla. Would she still be in love with him?

  “We’ll be at Little Haven on the morrow.” Moonsy harrumphed to remind Vanx and Gallarael that she and Chelda were still in the room. “The glaive is there.” She pointed to his belt. It was hanging on the desk chair’s nearest stile, easily within reach. “Use it if you think it will help, but it has done nothing but heal the worry wound you’ve worn into your hand.”

  “Vanx, I saw a little blue spider on you,” Chelda was more adamant this time.

  “I believe you Chel,” Vanx said. “I’ll strip down and have a hot soak and even scrub my skivvy’s” He gave her the best smile he could. “I’ll have to look my best for Molly.”

  “Who, by my brother’s falcon, is Molly?” Gallarael snapped.

  Chelda laughed away her severity. “It is from one of the songs Vanx sings, Gal. Take a deep breath. Come Moonsy, let’s let Vanx get cleaned up.”

  “Thanks, Chelda.” Vanx was serious. “I’ll double check my gear after I bathe.”

  “Yah.” Chelda seemed relieved now. “Don’t just wash the skivvy’s, Vanxy. Wash the rest of your clothes as well.”

  “Hmm.” he gave Gallarael a look. “Do I stink?”

  “You scared us when you went down.” She nodded her head. “We all thought it was a bite, like Chelda said, because you were pale and sweaty for a good while. You mumbled stuff.” With this she grinned. “You mumbled my name a few times.” She kissed his forehead and reached over him to give Poops’s head a rub.

  “I’ll get some water heating and have Ronzon bring down the tub.”

  “Don’t bother heating the water,” he said. “I need to practice using spells.”

  “Yes,” she nodded again. “Yes, according to Chelda, you do.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Six

  Deep under the deep,

  and deeper in the ground.

  That is where you’ll find yourself,

  if you wander around a fairy mound.

  – A rim rider campfire song

  After managing to heat the water to a boil, Vanx went through his clothes while he waited for it to cool. At one point, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he might have seen a little blue bug, dart into the folds of something, but he wasn’t sure, and eventually decided he was seeing things.

  He even went through the shoulder bag containing the old book and the wooden box. But he found no spiders.

  He took some time to wash his long hair. Then he soaked for a while. When he was finished washing the rest of himself, with lye soap and a handled scrubber, the water was a murky brown.

  Vanx practiced another spell and vanquished the filthy water from the tub out into the sea. He then found a clean sark, put it on, and carried the water bucket up into the starlit night. He wanted to fetch some fresh water from the barrel to wash his clothes in.

  “You’re alive then,” Ronzon said, startling Vanx. He was so sure that the Adventurer was taking care of the sailing that he’d almost forgotten Ronzon was up here.

  “I am.” Vanx grinned. “But barely. Never go adventuring with three women. It isn’t worth it.”

  “I heard that,” came an elven sounding voice. Vanx looked up to see Moonsy
in the crow’s nest, looking out across the dark choppy water with one of the tubes.

  “If you shutter the lantern, you’ll see better,” Vanx told her, and she did so.

  “When will we see the cliffs?” Vanx asked Ronzon. Sailing into Little Haven was sometimes tricky, for it was just a narrow passage between cliffs.

  “This ship owns the sea, Vanx.” Ronzon spoke as if he were proud to be the Adventurer’s deckhand. “We’ll not even need to touch that wheel, I bet’cha.”

  “We’ll see.” Vanx nodded. “Have you ever sailed into Little Haven? Have you ever been to Zyth?”

  “Been to Flotsam a time or two,” Ronzon shrugged. “Do they have the strider races in Little Haven? Them kanga beasts them heathens ride are amazing.”

  Ronzon didn’t seem to remember that Vanx was half-Zythian, but the racial comment didn’t bother Vanx anymore. It must have, Moonsy though. She cast a spell, that sent down a little strand of magic that captured the seaman’s attention. He and Vanx stood at the rail, watching raptly as the sparkling string, twisted and turned. Then it folded into a thin knot, moved closer to Ronzon, and snapped the mesmerized sailor right in the nose.

  “He is half-heathen, man.” Moonsy’s severity was feigned. “And Zeezle is a full blooded man-eater. You’d better watch yourself.”

  Ronzon was wide eyed, and Vanx thought he might have been afraid enough to cry, but when he saw the jest in Vanx’s face, and heard the mirth in Moonsy’s laugh, he accepted that he deserved what he’d gotten.

  “Sorry,” Ronzon dropped his head. “It’s just sailor talk.”

  “It’s all right.” Vanx patted the man on the shoulder. “But don’t let Zeezle hear it. He might try and make a stew of you. There is a racing pit outside of town, maybe after we find a translator, we will have time to go to the track. It will take a while to go through the whole book.”