Alik did not stop but only threw back a quick declaration, “Feai kyish.”
Deran hurried to catch up with him as he reached the edge of the camp. The ground fell away from there in a gentle decline directly to the south, and it had the watery look of thick, impassable mire, broken only by the twisting briars and reeds and tree roots rising out of it. Alik paused to gauge a trail. “I tell you what,” said Deran, “why don’t you go east with me? I have a great home there, and it’s safe, and there’ll be a heaping pit-load less of bugs. What do you say?”
Alik said, “Ga’a,” and plunged into the bog.
“That sounds like a ‘no,’” muttered Deran to himself. He followed Alik, careful to step exactly where the boy had stepped. Alik glanced after him, he fancied a little disappointedly. “I’m coming!” he declared. “You’re going to need a lot of help—more than you know—so don’t refuse me. Like I said, I promised to find you and protect you.”
Alik sighed and nodded and continued on his way.
Deran noted the path Alik took and the surprising ease with which the boy—raised wild, after all—hopped from one clump of brush to another and on to a convenient root or piece of higher ground. He stepped out, was somewhat surprised to find the ground firm, stepped out to the next clump and got his cloak tangled in the brush, drew his knife and cut himself loose, took another step, and plunged into the bog to his waist. “Oh very funny!” he shouted after Alik. Alik paid no attention and did not even turn to laugh.
For some time they continued on, Alik far in the lead but remaining within sight. Deran began to appreciate what the natives meant when they named this swamp the Impassable Bog. He glanced to the side as a huge boa inched seductively through the fronds of the undergrowth, and for a moment he caught sight of its marble-yellow eye through the brush. The croaking of the frogs was almost deafening. Everywhere there were plants, floating on the water, forming an impassable crush on every inch of solid ground, filtering the bog through twisting networks of arduous root-work, and veiling the last light of the day with their thick foliage.
Ahead, Alik reached the banks of a low mound or levee, bare except for a speckled red mass of thorny vine. Deran wasn’t paying much attention, as he was tired and had to focus all his concentration on the trail before him to keep from being sucked into the bog or lost in a pool of quicksand. Alik, however, had stopped, wading up to his knees in the bog, and was scanning the thorny red vines warily. He reached down into the water, came back with a leech, and threw it into the tangle of vines.
Barely a fleck of light remained of the day, but he thought he heard the vines rustle around the place where the leech had landed, and the little creature vanished from sight. Then a vine dipped into the water, and Alik froze.
Deran came nearer and nearer, cutting his way loudly along the trail and muttering curses here and there. “Deran,” Alik breathed, not daring to raise his voice.
Deran kept coming, but he suddenly became aware of Alik near in front of him, stock-still in the ripple-less bog. He stopped, planting his feet one on the low, narrow ledge of the trail embankment and the other in the water. He looked up at Alik and asked, “What?”
The ripples expanded across the pool of the bog, brushed Alik (but did not reflect from him), and reached the opposite shore. Then suddenly the speckled red vine uprooted itself from the bank and slipped into the water. Alik rolled into the water without a ripple and disappeared from view. Deran cursed and glanced around for a sturdy tree. There was one a few feet to his right, overhanging the water, and he splashed through the water to its trunk and leapt into it. A branch of vine shot out of the water at him and he slashed it with his knife. The tip of the vine splashed into the water and was engulfed by the mass of the vine creature as it rose out of the water. Deran scrambled awkwardly up the tree-trunk and out onto the branch overlooking the water. The vine creature slithered up the trunk after him with a dozen tentacle arms. The last of the creature left the water and wrapped around the tree-trunk, and the vine ends slithered out onto the limb after Deran. He sliced one off, shaking the limb so that he almost fell after it. Another branch swung at him with its long thorns, and he backed away just out of range. He glanced down at the water, backed a little farther on the limb—as far as he judged he could safely go—dodged another pair of spiked tentacles, and jumped.
He hit the water hard and paddled frantically to the far shore, where Alik was laying silently, waiting for him. He touched Alik and glanced back: the vine creature was still in the tree, evidently confused by his sudden disappearance. He whispered to Alik, “Come on, Alik, before it comes back.”
“Eh...c...g...ca...,” Alik stuttered, and remained face down on the shore.
“Alik?” Deran asked. He noticed a few reddish welts on the boy’s arm and tried to lift him. He was light but limp, with no strength in his limbs at all.
“Ce...en...do...l...l,” Alik stuttered. His skin was also clammy and insensitive.
Deran muttered something under his breath and lifted the boy into his arms. “Come on, Alik, I told you you’d need my help.”
Beyond the bank where the vine creature had been, and where they were now, the ground was somewhat higher and might even have been described as hilly. He could not see far: the undergrowth grew past his head and was at least as thick as it had been before. He heard a marsh-cat somewhere far away behind them. He hadn’t the skill to treat Alik’s poisoning himself and he doubted there was anyone else nearby who could, unless he were to carry Alik back through all that mess they’d just gone through. “A little rest, first,” he thought out loud.
There was a tall and gnarled tree, reaching at least into the first canopy, on the bank. He set Alik on a low shoulder of the tree and climbed up after him, and by steps climbed with him to a suitable roost twenty feet up.
An idea came to him, and he lifted the collar of Alik’s cloak and peeked underneath. Neither the necklace nor the crystal shard upon it were there. Alik opened his eyes wearily and looked at him. Deran patted his shoulder paternally and withdrew his hand. Alik closed his eyes again. Good idea, thought Deran, and went to sleep.
He woke up alone, soaked with mist or sweat, his head and back aching because of his position against the branches. “Alik?” he called. He wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t get one. “Alik?” he repeated, scanning the ground below. To his relief, he found Alik sitting against the roots of the tree. He climbed down quickly and hopped to the ground. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “I was worried for a moment.”
Alik glanced at him and nodded absentmindedly, then turned his attention back to his hands. He held a stone in one hand and now and again opened and closed his hands, turned them over, or passed the stone from one to the other. As Deran addressed him he was switching the rock from left to right, and it rolled out of his hand as he tried to close it. He kicked it in disgust.
“I see you’re feeling better this morning,” observed Deran.
Alik spat back something bitter and indecipherable and stood up. He grabbed hold of the trunk of the tree and covered his eyes and nearly fell back down. He fell against the tree-trunk and stood leaning against it till the spell passed.
“Alik,” said Deran. The boy looked up, squinting to stifle his faintness. “Weren’t you wearing some sort of necklace before...back in the city? I wouldn’t want....”
“Do’ e’ inm lav,” muttered Alik. He pushed himself away from the tree suddenly, took his bearings, and pushed past Deran due south. Deran caught him by the shoulder and he flashed a smoldering glare back in return.
“I’m a friend,” said Deran emphatically. He let go of Alik. “I don’t want you to end up starving to death or being torn to pieces by some beast in the middle of the forsaken nowhere; that’s all.”
Alik paused. “D...t... thei’ ieu,” he stuttered, and went his way. Deran followed him, doing his best to conceal his displeasure.
The day was long and hot. Alik stayed ahead as before, but he somet
imes stumbled or walked into a low-hanging vine that slipped out of his hands. He moved slower and more clumsily than before, and his skin was pasty white in contrast to the deepening, darkening jungle.
Deran contented himself to follow. The ground was much higher and more mountainous as they went along. At the beginning of the day they were surrounded by marshy forest plain overgrown with briars and brush, but within a few hours the land progressed into hills and finally into a furrowed and folded mountain jungle. Alik headed basically due south, regardless of the terrain, often scaling difficult ridges and hills that could have easily been gotten around.
A light rain began in the late day and did not let up. Alik stopped and sat down on a mossy rock outcropping on a bend in the trail and dangled his feet over the steep slope edge. Deran caught up with him and sat down a little way back beneath the better cover of a young, broad-leafed sapling. He had thrown the hood of his cloak over his head when the rain had begun, and he did not remove it now. His stomach gnawed at him.
Alik sat upon the mossy stone. For a while he saw only the amazing view of the land to the south and west rolling in dense, lush green over jungle-carpeted ridges as far as the eye could see. Clouds passed like low-lying mists, and the sky above was an unbroken grey. The bars of the rain streaked all.
He looked down at his hands, where the rain-drops pattered in fat, splashing globs. He could see the rain, but could not feel it. He could feel nothing. It was like an illusion, but not an interesting or mysterious illusion: rather, a terrifying, desolate one, mocking him and scorning his senses. He was suddenly aware of the inescapable miserableness of the whole world.
He let his head drop into his hands, and was on the verge of tears for some time before Deran spoke behind him, “Imagine walking over all of that.” Alik half-turned his head. He could not read Deran’s echoing, uninflected tone nor judge the particular aim of his words.
Deran said, “Two hundred fifty years ago, this all was barren frontier land. Grey stone flats, hills, rolling ranges of grain and horses and sand. The old Ladrian potentates would gallop over the hills, leading their cavalry or solitary, carrying missives from city to city, living out their fairy tale love and plunder, goodness and deceit. Then they were all wiped away. First the armies plundered their remains; then the treasure-hunters came. Thankless lives. Toves, hexes, murahs.... Some survived, reaped little rewards and little honor. I remember one old grizz, hobbling back through the Narrissor gates. I was very young then. His shin was mangled, his foot gone, his beard pasty, his face ghostlike. His hands were filled with elf-stone emeralds and a golden gauntlet filled with coins. He wanted to know where his family was. Where they had gone. They were all dead.”
Alik shuddered before the droning power of the unconquerable waterwoods pressing in around him. His cloak pressed damply against his skin in the muggy air, though he could not feel it. He turned his head to distract himself with the view. Through the trees to his left he could just make out, so close he could almost hold it, the shear face of the mountain he had seen in his dreams for two nights now. The towering plume of a waterfall, muted by the rain and partly hidden in its own cloud veil, etched the face of the mountain: the Southern Tower.
From someplace nearby a high-pitched cry, “Aaieee-aa!” sounded through the rain and was answered.
“It’s not such a bad world, to leave it behind,” Deran went on. “Fame doesn’t hide out here. Here you’re no more than a tasty morsel for a rampant vegetable. I know they would love you, Alik...my people, not the plants. In Narrissor. You could retire quietly, peacefully, live your life as you have been called to do, become a wise and noble teacher....” He tried to gauge whether he had gone too far or not. He could not tell.
They remained for some time without words. The strange cries Alik had heard just then recurred nearer, then again somewhat further away. Slowly, however, Alik came to be aware of something else: a voice, but as though reaching across many miles, sometimes fading as the wind changed direction, sometimes disappearing altogether.
What had Deran meant by that? Alik wondered.
“We’d better be going,” Deran suddenly announced. He put his hands on his knees and stood. Alik didn’t move. “We...,” Deran began again. Alik cut him off with a hiss. He waited.
The voice appeared again. “Alik!” it cried, very close behind them, on their trail. Alik scrambled to his feet and ran back down the trail. Deran called him back in a hushed rasp and ran after him, catching up with him abruptly around the corner of the trail where the north slope fell off into the valley they had just climbed out of.
“Alik, you...,” Deran started. Don’t know who it is, was the rest of the thought. There was no noise except the faint drifting of the rain. Alik was suddenly aware of how clear a trail they’d left through the jungle underbrush, as though he had been stumbling blind...except that it was his sense of touch he had lost. He scanned the broken trail back into the valley, and as he did so, a tall and powerfully-built elven warrior parted through the brush.
Across the valley, at the crest of the next ridge, two drakes circled low to the ground and landed below the feet of a tall, lean, grizzly black-bearded man. “Keiiva, Kerreijj, as a’ways,” the man spoke in a numbing accent. The drakes purred at his feet. “Not to be outdone,” he smiled grimly.
“Father,” a young, female voice spoke from behind him.
“Ah, my dear,” the man said, “Zary, you’d hunt the elf scribe, I think.”
“I would,” she replied. “Lend me eight drakes and you may forget him.”
“Do not underestimate him. I va’ue my drakes...and my daughter.”
“Yes, Father, Krythar.” She beckoned to the drake, Keiiva, resting on the General Krythar’s shining black boots. It glanced up and with a few beats of its wings was in the air. The general’s daughter hopped nimbly down the trail past him.
“Zaris,” said Krythar, suddenly stopping her. She turned. “Try to do it quiet’y,” he advised. “I don’t want Deran disappearing down some ‘ole.”
“Yes, Father,” she answered. Keiiva reappeared with eight more drakes, variously colored dull grey to dun to reddish-brown. Zaris started down the path and soon disappeared from sight.
“Keiiva,” said the general, “trail along behind them...just in case. Good girl.”
Alik watched as the strong elven warrior came nearer and nearer and a few minutes later called out his name again. Then suddenly the elf warrior stopped, glanced first toward the ridge from which Alik was watching and then back on the trail behind him.
“We had better disappear,” whispered Deran to Alik. “This man thinks to attract you by deception, but he’s an old enemy of mine and will spare you only if it suits his ends. Come.”
Alik hardly believed that. The elf’s call had a ring to it that brought to mind the old man in the Chellaeia camp. Yet there was also something frighteningly stern about him. Alik was no one to take risks: he turned to leave.
The bushes opened up suddenly around them without a rustle, and before either of them could run or raise a hand in self-defense they were both pulled to the ground and bound securely by hand, foot, head, and mouth. The pungent smell of damp earth stifled Alik as he fell. Hands he could not feel caught hold of him and slowed the approach of his head to the earth. Then he caught a helpless glimpse of a swarthy, child-sized hand and a rumpled black handkerchief, and all went dark.
The struggle on the ridge took place without a sound, but as soon as it was done there burst out from the treetops a cacophony of such proportions that the elf warrior below immediately drew his sword and crouched to the ground. His ears perked up and his eyes darted in every direction. He spotted a dwarf-like creature crouching in the branches high above, and it waved frantically at him and threw something into the canopy. At once a half dozen clumps of foliage fell out of the canopy toward the object. He recognized them at once: tree toves. He had no choice but to run.
Trusting to the directness of the trail he h
ad followed thus far, he broke into a run up the side of the ridge. Even as he did so, his ears picked up the whish of an arrow and he leapt to the side out of the way. A flash of black fletching streaked past him and vanished into the brush. The direction, he thought...then, too late. He dashed up the ridge as the tree toves crashed to the ground and coiled. One of the brush-like beasts charged against another of them, and for a moment the fronds raged as with a wild boar.
The elf warrior dove to the ground behind the relative protection of a flimsy sapling. He breathed in and out cautiously. Nothing moved behind him—or above him. Two of the tree toves that had started after him stopped...maybe six paces distance. They were sensing for vibrations or motion, he knew. He gave himself even odds of outrunning them from his current range of six paces’ distance because of their lack of stamina...poorer odds for fighting. And somewhere behind him there was an archer targeting for him. Where was that dwarf?
A drake soared through the trees heading straight for him. Krythar! He cursed to himself. His hand tightened around his sword hilt but he realized if he moved he would have to run. Then he would be fair game for arrows, drakes, and toves. He ran.
He did not stop to look. There was a stifled cry like a drake’s and an arrow flew wild over his head. He ran south.
III.ii.
An elderly woman with a fountain of flowing white hair strode quickly across the room to the hearth, where a kettle was beginning to steam vigorously. She eyed the kettle patiently down the length of her long nose, and when it boiled, lifted it and poured its contents into a wooden bowl upon the counter by the hearth. Her head brushed clusters of nameless herbs and spices dangling from the low ceiling of the room. A dwarfish creature with a jungle-green parka and a curling hood sat across from her, hands upon his knees and feet squarely planted on the floor, by what might have been the entrance to wherever they were.
The Wizard's Heir Page 12
