by W. C. Conner
7
The outpost sat in a notch high on the sides of the Korvath mountain range defining the northern border of the principality of Gleneagle. It had been through these mountains that the barbarians had come that had made up Greyleige’s terrifying army four years before. Following the horrifying massacre of the wizard’s army, there had been two full years during which there were no raids by the barbarians; so badly were their fighting abilities depleted. Over the past two years, however, that had changed as a new leader arose, and the frequency and success rate of the barbarians’ invasions had increased noticeably.
A snow so fine it was not much more than frozen fog floated about the squad of Gleneagle’s border guards as they stood looking at the extended family of barbarians that had materialized from the mist. One middle aged man, clearly the dominant male of the clan, spoke in broken sentences, his guttural accent making it difficult for the squadron commander to understand what he was saying. The man, clad in animal skins, was doing his best with his elementary grasp of the soldiers’ language, liberally sprinkled with gestures and pantomime, to get his thoughts across to Gleneagle’s soldiers.
Behind and to the side of him, three females of childbearing age and two armed males watched warily. Five children ranging in age from toddler to perhaps eight years of age looked with wide-eyed fear at the troops in their uniforms. The two oldest ones edged as inconspicuously as they could toward the heat of a blazing fire in the center of the clearing.
“I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the darknesses, captain,” said the sergeant, turning to his superior. “Best I can tell he’s saying it’s making the people crazy. That part where he imitated a wolf? He’s saying that’s what the darkness is doing to them; they go crazy and act like animals. Then they run away, never to be seen again. He says they came here hoping to get away from this curse they believe was sent by their gods.”
The captain of the guard had been watching the faces of the group closely during the entire proceeding, looking for any signs of subterfuge or hostility and finding only fear.
“Show them to the hut we use for prisoners, sergeant, but make it clear that they are our guests,” he said, “and have the cook warm some stew and bread for them. They don’t look like they’ve had a decent meal in quite a while.” He turned and started to walk away, but stopped and turned back toward them. “After they’ve settled in, I’d like to meet with their leader in my quarters.”
The captain sat at his writing desk, a piece of paper before him. He was cutting a new nib on the goose quill when his sergeant stepped through the door and offered a quick salute.
“The barbarian, sir,” he said.
“Thank you, sergeant. You may leave us alone, now.” At the frown on his sergeant’s face, he added, “We are not to be disturbed.”
Indicating a chair to the leader of the barbarian clan, the officer introduced himself.
“I am Captain Templeton of the Prince’s border guards and, unless I am mistaken, you are Drogol, leader of the peoples of the north.” The barbarian showed no surprise or fear at the revelation that this man knew he was sitting across the table from what had been his deadliest enemy until just a short time ago.
“Ya. I Drogol of Northmen. I no fight.”
“I know that, Drogol, and I know what it is you and your people are fleeing. It is very bad, very evil. Many of your people have been here. I would like you to go to our war leader, Prince Gleneagle, and tell him your story. You would not go as a prisoner. You would go as a war leader to talk to another war leader.”
Drogol had been listening closely. He understood the soldier’s language far better than he spoke it.
“Drogol will go. Drogol will talk to war leader.”
Rising, Captain Templeton rang a small bell and held out his hand toward Drogol, his palm up in a sign of friendship. Drogol looked at it gravely as the door opened and the sergeant stepped just inside the room. After a long moment he stood and reached over to grasp the offered hand, holding the grip for several long moments as he looked directly into Captain Templeton’s eyes before letting go. He seemed satisfied by what he had seen.
“I no fight. I talk.” Inclining his head slightly, he turned and walked from the room.
Templeton sat back down at the table, took up the quill and dipped it into the inkwell.
Gleneagle broke the seal on the paper handed to him by the sergeant without studying the man who had entered with him and began to read.
Highness,
The man accompanying the bearer of this letter is the leader of the men of the north who have often raided our borders in the past. You know him by name and reputation. He is Drogol and he is under the protection of your principality by my orders until such time as you order otherwise.
Drogol and his family surrendered themselves willingly to our custody, having fled their territory in fear of the creatures of darkness that have been seen increasingly in the principality.
Drogol’s understanding of our language is quite a bit better than his command of speaking it. With the help of an interpreter I daresay the two of you could have a most interesting conversation. While he is a barbarian, sire, he is nevertheless very smart, very canny, and an excellent war leader.
With the numbers of creatures of the darkness that have been reported of late, my sense is that we may well need whatever allies we may be able to find in the not too distant future.
Respectfully,
Templeton, Captain, Northern Border Guard
Prince Gleneagle looked up from the letter in his hand to find the barbarian’s eyes studying him. Drogol had watched him closely from the moment he had walked into the room, measuring him, assessing him and finding the strength of a true war leader in him. Here is a war leader worthy of the name, he had decided. He stood erect before the noticeably taller Gleneagle and stared defiantly into his eyes as a sign of respect for his strength.
Gleneagle’s first response to the clear look of defiance had been mild alarm, but as he calmly regarded the northern war leader, he revised that assessment and returned the defiant stare.
“You have great strength, Drogol,” he said without smiling, for he sensed that to smile would have been to belittle the respect Drogol was showing him. The war leader held out his hand, palm up as Templeton had and Gleneagle grasped it firmly.
“Drogol will fight.”
“Gleneagle will fight beside the great war leader, Drogol. We will eat and drink and talk, war leader to war leader.”
As the interpreter moved closer, the two sat down at a table upon which meats, cheeses, fruit, and mugs of ale had been set.
Outside the walls of the castle a young woman lay on her back in the dark, her body savaged and her throat torn out by a darkness-touched Northman who dashed away, following the imperative that drove him toward Blackstone.
8
Caron stood before the Old Forest, swaying slightly from side to side in nervous anticipation of what was to come. She stared unseeing at the ground before her as she waited. Behind her upon the road, her husband and her companions, along with most of the earth wizard brotherhood, observed her in silence.
To Caron alone, the Old Forest abruptly sprang to life with light and color. She looked up expectantly as a pathway appeared, seeming almost to be a vaulted corridor into the Forest. The onlookers saw nothing of what she saw as she walked the few yards to the edge of the Forest and disappeared from their sight as she stepped into the arched pathway.
Come to me.
I am coming, though I do not know the way.
Do not rush, Caron, for it is a long path. There will be food and water whenever you feel the need. Have patience and follow the summoning. You will sense how it works as soon as you stop trying to understand it. You will know your destination when you arrive.
The voice in her head stopped and she slowed to an easy walk, knowing she was moving in the right direction simply from the feeling within her, though the pathway was no longer clearly
marked as it had been at the entrance.
Caron looked around herself as she walked. She felt more than a bit unreal after all these years of wishing and wanting and wondering what the elven forest would be like. It was exactly as it had been in her dreams, and those parts of her senses inherited from her elven ancestry reached out in all directions, reveling in what she was feeling. There was no sense of danger or threat anywhere, and she could not dispel the feeling that she had been in this place at some point in the distant past.
She knew with absolute certainty that this was how the world had looked when it was new, for there was no sign of withering or of blight no matter where she looked. It was as if it was eternally spring, but without the left over detritus of a winter just past. Once again, as in her dreams, she wondered how darkness could exist anywhere in a world in which the power of this place existed.
Though she was lightly dressed, the temperature remained always comfortable whether night or day, and food and drink presented themselves whenever she had need of them.
The farther she traveled, the more the cares and dangers of the world beyond the borders of the Old Forest faded from her consciousness and the more the elven part of her instincts emerged. More and more she felt herself a part of the earth, much more than just an animal that lived upon the earth. She felt herself becoming one with the sentience that surrounded her. At the same time, her anxiety about the meeting she both hoped for and dreaded grew with each day that passed.
After a full week of walking, she arrived at a circular opening in the trees which she recognized as being the place in which Wil had appeared to her in her dreams. Her elven senses were tingling. Here was the locus of the power of the Old Forest. Here was where the shade of Gleneagle had instructed Wil. Here was the place from which the last elf had departed.
She stood looking around the opening for a long moment, filled with indecision and doubt about her true motivation in coming here. Was she here to summon Wil’s help in battling the darknesses, or was she here to be a part of the Old Forest as she had imagined her entire life, or was she here to confront her true feelings about Wil? It was all of these, she realized as she drew her courage together and spoke to the emptiness before her.
“Wil,” she called softly. “I have come for you.”
Trembling, she closed her eyes as she waited. Her hands tightly clenched for any response – fearful that he would answer, fearful that he would not answer, fearful that he would appear only to fade as he had in her dreams.
“I am here, Caron,” said a familiar voice.
Though he spoke in not much more than a whisper, Caron jumped as if he had shouted in her ear and her eyes flew open. There, not three feet before her stood Wil, his smile appearing as uncertain as she felt. For one brief moment she looked into the steel gray eyes she had dreamed of so many times, seeing in them the truth she had half hoped, half feared she would see before the darkness drew in on her. Wil stepped forward quickly and caught her as she fainted.
Back at the border of the Forest, the observers upon the road had stood mute for several long moments following their collective gasp at the moment Caron disappeared. Then, as if a spell had been broken, they looked around at one another and turned to walk silently away from the Forest.
Roland and the rest of Caron’s companions followed Eldred and Gregory back to the wizards’ hall. Each of them was lost in thought; each of them considering what they had seen and wondering whether Caron would find what she sought.
At last, Eldred broke the silence. “Caron is on her way. I feel it fitting that we celebrate her accomplishment with the meal we had prepared to welcome her.” They sat down at a long table that had been prepared for the welcoming dinner.
Scrubby bowed his head in thanks as he always did before a meal and gave a thought to Caron, wondering how far she had gotten and hoping she could find the best and only true friend he ever had until Mattie entered his life. We need your help, Wil. There are some really scary things happening.
Scrubby’s eyes popped open as Wil’s voice sounded inside his head. Stay close to your family, Scrubby. Do not allow anyone outside at night. Caron will return to you soon.
He looked to the others to see if they had heard Wil’s voice as well. Mattie and Little Wil worked diligently at the food before them as did Kemp and Peg’s twins, but the rest of the original companions and Roland all sat staring around as he was. As their eyes met, each one nodded to the other in recognition of what they had experienced.
Eldred looked at them, an expression of wonder on his face as he watched them exchange their silent glances. He had heard Wil’s voice inside his own head saying much the same thing.
“I suspect from the looks on our faces that I’m not the only person here who Wil spoke to just now,” he said.
“He just spoke to me,” Scrubby volunteered. “He says Caron will be back to us soon and that we must stay indoors at night.” As he spoke the others nodded, then they all started talking at the same time about what they had seen, and what they imagined and hoped Caron was experiencing, and guessing at how soon she would return to them.
But not all had heard the same message.
Roland smiled calmly. She is yours, Roland. She loves you most dearly. You must never doubt that. Cherish her. Protect her and the new life that grows within her.
Beside Eldred, Gregory had straightened in his chair as the voice whispered personalized messages in the minds of the others at the table who had been directly involved in the confrontation with Greyleige. While conversation broke out around him, Gregory stared straight ahead, a look of concern on his face. Do not pursue the darkness lest it pursue you, for it is stronger than you deem it. Do not trust in your power alone; that way lies the trap of arrogance and death.
Ignore those words, whispered another thought so deep inside his mind he was not aware of the whisper. You know what it is you seek. As the thought took hold his expression changed from one of concern to one of defiance.
I know better than he just what it is we face, for I have faced them before and I pursue them by night even now, he thought. If he truly understood these darknesses as I do, he would not feel as he does. I know the purity of my intentions and the limits of my power. I will continue to locate and bind them, for if I do not, the evil they are will grow until they are too much to be defeated. At that thought, his face relaxed into a relieved smile, for he knew he worked for the good of all life on the earth.
In a stone cottage at the center of the Old Forest, Wil lay on his side as if asleep. He had dropped to the earthen floor, exhausted from the effort required to break through the warding barriers of the Old Forest with his words of hope and warning to those outside. Even his previous summoning to Caron had required a great deal of life force energy to penetrate the barriers, and that had been to a single person who was highly attuned to him. This time he had sent a series of individual messages nearly simultaneously to many recipients and it had drained him to the point that he was practically insensate.
As he lay there, the echo of Gregory’s defiant thoughts came to him and he willed himself to break through the barrier to reach the wizard one more time. Beware the arrogance of power, he thought. But he was exhausted and the barrier of magic warding the Old Forest swatted his sending aside as if it were a sick puppy.
His powers now totally drained, Wil rolled onto his back and crossed his arms upon his chest as his mind and body shut themselves down to regenerate in wizard’s sleep.
The animals of the Forest moved unconcerned outside the hut as the shimmering light of Gleneagle appeared and hovered above the apparently comatose wizard.
“You cannot be allowed out of the Old Forest at this time, Wilton,” the shade of the elf said softly. “Your powers are too immense to risk exposure to the evil that drifts everywhere beyond these borders. Your love for mankind is great, but your potential for ruin is almost without limit.” He shook his head sadly. “You will have to fight from within the Forest using
my progeny as your tool. Use her well and accept her sacrifice as it is intended.”
Deep in his mind, Wil heard the elf’s words and he screamed silently into the blackness, It cannot be! I will not let it be! You cannot do this to me!
The wizard’s sleep took him deeper and deeper into his regenerative state of hibernation until he had no consciousness or thought of any sort and Caron became no more than another particle of energy among the trillions that surrounded the spot where his power renewed itself. His body glowed with a faint blue nimbus as darkness descended on the Forest.
Somewhere, not far inside the margin of the Old Forest, Caron walked on quietly, determined to travel as far as she could each day to hasten the moment when she could once again see the man who had summoned her.
9
Marlis stood holding onto the back of the chair and looking up into little Ellen’s face as Mattie held her on her shoulder, patting her back. When Ellen burped noisily, Marlis broke into delighted giggles and ran to Peg.
“Bup, Mama. Eln bup,” she said before running back over to see if Ellen would burp one more time for her.
The laughter of young boys drifted through the side door leading to the stable area. Outside, Philip was crashing around the side yard, a blindfold over his eyes. “Fee fi fo fab,” he growled as he stalked them, “which little boy am I going to grab? Will it be Mitchal or Harold or Wil? Which of these morsels am I going to grill?” Delighted shrieks of excitement accompanied his questions as Little Wil, Mitchal and Harold scattered before his flailing arms.
Kemp was out with Scrubby, making the rounds with him as he picked up garbage from around the town to feed his always hungry hogs.
