The Wizard of the North

by Richard Stephens

  They walked at a brisk pace through the shadows of the crevice until the sun rose high enough to bathe them in much-welcomed warmth. Other than the persistent nag of buzzing insects biting at them, and clouds of irritating gnats flying about their faces, they hadn’t encountered anything else that appeared remotely dangerous.

  Several times they stepped clear of a nasty looking spider web or saw the end coils of a snake curl deeper beneath a rock at their approach, but neither sibling felt threatened. Silurian had sheathed his sword early on so as not to tire his arm.

  Melody climbed onto a flat boulder and sat down to grab a bite to eat.

  Silurian surveyed their surroundings before joining her. “You sure you know where you’re going?”

  Melody shrugged and bit into a piece of her wizard’s bread. She held out a piece to Silurian, but he turned up his nose.

  “No thanks. I only have so many teeth.”

  “Come on,” she urged. “You need to eat something.”

  “What else you got in that bag of tricks?”

  Melody balanced the slab of her black rock-bread on her lap and dug through the small leather bag. She pulled out two vials, one containing a red liquid and the other containing a green substance. Setting them carefully on the rock between them, she dug back into the bag. She retrieved two tightly bound scrolls and dropped them beside the vials and was about to search some more but Silurian’s puzzled look stopped her. “What the matter?”

  “That bag,” he said, picking up the vial with the red liquid in it and holding it up to the light to inspect it further. “How can it hold all this stuff? It doesn’t look like there’s anything in it?”

  She buried her face in the bag’s opening. “The bag? Oh, it’s a magic bag,” she offered, as if that explained everything.

  Silurian put the red vial down and grabbed the green one. He started to shake it.

  She shot a hand out and snatched it from him. “Don’t do that again,” she said and carefully placed it down on her far side.

  “What’s it do?”

  She reached back into the leather bag. “It blows up caves, that’s what it does.”

  Silurian frowned, but she ignored him. Finally, she withdrew a withered piece of dried meat. “Here, try this.”

  “Where’d you get that?” He took the palm-sized offering and turned it over. He sniffed at it, and then tested its pliability.

  “Beats me. Are you going to get acquainted with it, or eat it? I wouldn’t mind a piece, myself.”

  “What is it?”

  She mumbled, “Not sure, actually.”

  Silurian nibbled a small piece and chewed.

  Melody took the rest out of his hand. “Well?”

  “It’s salty, that’s for sure.”

  “Ya? Let me try.” With a little difficulty, she tore the meat in two and handed a piece back to him. Talking around her piece, she said, “If I’m not mistaken, we need to stick close to the western rock face until we come across the untravelled path.”

  “The untravelled path?”

  Melody took a moment to finish chewing and swallowed. She grabbed up the vials and scrolls and stuffed them back into the worn leather bag. When she was satisfied, she looked Silurian square in the eyes. “How did you guys ever get out of here?”

  Silurian shrugged. “I don’t know, we just did.”

  “Well, mister world explorer. The key to finding your way out of the trench is to locate the untravelled road. The path that doesn’t look like it’s been travelled upon.”

  “What the hell does that mean? How do we find a path that isn’t used? It wouldn’t be a path then, would it?”

  “It’s hard to explain. Leave it to me. I’ll know it when I see it.” She slid from the rock and cupped her chin in her free hand, looking around. “Hmm, now which way did we come from?”

  Silurian stepped down beside her, frowning. “Really?”

  Melody let out a great laugh and began walking.

  Silurian shoved the back of her shoulder, making her stumble.

  She threw her head back and laughed louder.

  Shortly before nightfall, Silurian located a small cave at the base of the cliff. He debated the merits of being exposed during the night over sleeping in a cave where they risked being trapped. He mentioned his feelings to Melody.

  “Oh, the cave. Definitely,” Melody replied and made a beeline for it.

  After inspecting the cave to ensure nothing else had the same idea, Silurian spent the next while gathering scraps of dried plants and bits of wood that had fallen over the brink, thousands of feet above, thinking as he did that he wouldn’t want to be standing in the wrong spot when something did fall into the Gap. With that thought in mind, he picked up his pace.

  Melody already had a small fire going at the back of the deep, narrow cave, its rear wall hidden behind a bend in the short passageway. The close confines weren’t ideal to allow the smoke to escape but at least they were warm.

  Silurian agreed to keep first watch after another meagre meal of Melody’s tooth gnashing wizard’s bread. He could sure go for some of that disgusting gruel the Voil had whipped up in the Under Realm.

  Hidden in the cave, he lost all sense of time. He caught himself nodding off a couple of times, so he went to sit by the cave mouth.

  It didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness of the Gap. The clear night sky provided enough light to see the wide-open tracts of the Gap’s floor between pillars of rock formations and piles of landfall near the cliff walls. The usual nighttime sounds filled the canyon, most of them distant but for the incessant crickets. An owl sounded not too far away.

  The air was so much nicer to breathe out in the open, but it was colder. Gooseflesh pimpled his skin. He shivered, but the cool air kept him awake.

  A big cat yowled and then screeched, followed by a deeper roar that came from the same direction. A battle for survival was taking place down the canyon from where they had travelled. What if the creature that had feasted below them yesterday followed their trail? He could only hope that whatever it fought now would be enough to sate its appetite.

  He was surprised by how long the intense battle lasted before the Gap became quiet again. In the ensuing silence, his imagination played havoc with him. As some shadows lengthened, others shortened, revealing different piles of debris along the canyon floor.

  He and Melody had been lucky thus far. The last time through here, he and his companions had fought for their lives against a variety of predators. Or was that in the Wilds? He shook his head. His memories seemed to commingle with each other. He found it hard to separate them anymore.

  He shivered uncontrollably and decided to retreat into the cave. He had only taken a couple of steps when a movement from inside the cave made him catch his breath.

  “It’s just me, silly,” Melody said, seeing the startled look in his eyes. “Go get some sleep.”

  He was about to admonish her for scaring him so, but he bit back the words. Instead, he looked out into the lengthening shadows of the Gap as the moon’s light faded. “It’s okay. I’ll sit with you.”

  Melody gave him a stern, motherly look. “No. You need to sleep. I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.” She lifted her staff and thumped it on the ground, raising her eyebrows and giving him a closed mouth smile.

  Silurian hesitated. He cast his gaze about again and listened. Finally, he nodded. “I heard a couple of animals fighting in the distance, back the way we came, I think, but other than that, it’s been quiet.” He stepped past Melody, into the cave and stopped. “I hope it isn’t the same animal as last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing I guess. I just hope something isn’t stalking us.”

  Melody frowned. “Hmm. Well, no matter. I’ll watch for it.”

  Silurian wanted to say more—to give him an excuse to remain with her, but he lowered his eyes and disappeared into the smoky cave.

&
nbsp; Everything looked the same. Every rock formation individually different, but lumped together, the gloomy Gap floor was as non-descript now as it had been when they’d first entered it at the base of Dragon’s Tooth.

  It was late in the afternoon, two days since she and her brother had descended into the murky chasm. The only constant was the soaring heights of Dragon’s Tooth at their backs and the unscalable cliffs looming on either side of the path they trod.

  Once in a while an obvious path branched off the one they followed, but none of them felt right. Melody began fretting that she wouldn’t be able to find the one they needed.

  The sun had long since disappeared beyond the western cliff face when she stopped at a crossroads between two towering rock formations, clearly exasperated.

  “What’s wrong?” Silurian asked, his hand coming to rest on the hilt of his sword.

  Melody shook her head. “No, it’s not that. It’s me. I don’t know if I can remember how to find the right path.”

  “That’s not good. Surely, you’ll know it when you see it. How long’s it been since you were last through here?”

  Melody knitted her brow as she pondered the side path toward the western cliff wall. “Um, I don’t know…five, maybe six years.”

  “Six years? You haven’t left the cave for six years?”

  “Ya, something like that. Ever since Phazarus left.”

  “You mean he didn’t die?”

  “Well no. Not exactly.” Melody said, a dejected look on her face. “I don’t think this is it either.”

  They started back along the semblance of a path, picking their way through piles of stone that had been shaped over thousands of years by springtime run-off and flash floods.

  “What does that mean, not exactly?”

  Melody stopped. “It’s hard to explain. Suffice it to say, Phazarus, as Wizard of the North, had spent his usefulness. He needed me.”

  “I’m confused. You disappeared over twenty years ago. What have you two been doing for, what…?” Silurian did the math in his head. “The last seventeen years. Less the last five or six, that is.”

  “One doesn’t become a wizard overnight.”

  Silurian raised his eyes, indicating she needed to expand upon that statement.

  “All Phazarus said when he left that last time was that he had a couple of things he needed to look after before he could allow himself to give in to his eternal sleep.”

  Silurian frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “He didn’t elaborate. He said it’s my turn to watch over the lands.” She looked around, bewildered. “Fine job I’m doing, huh? Can’t even find a way out of this hole.”

  They located a large, arched rock formation to hide beneath for the night. Silurian had taken the first watch again, but other than the usual nocturnal birds and insects, nothing untoward disturbed the night. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing or not.

  Around midmorning the next day, they came across the spot where the western wall veered due west into the reaches of another major fissure. This was the day Melody had said they would be able to ascend out of the Gap. Although they hadn’t confronted anything dangerous while walking through its shadows, Silurian would be grateful when they left the canyon behind. It almost seemed like their route had proven too uneventful. As if something, or someone, had orchestrated their journey.

  He reproached himself for thinking that way—nothing was ever gained by fearmongering but, given everything he had undergone over the last couple of months, he couldn’t discount his feelings. He recalled fighting his entire way through here when he had travelled this way with the Group of Five.

  “Our path lies somewhere nearby. I remember that side chasm.” Melody said, studying their surroundings.

  Silurian considered his sister. How could she not recall the gaping chasm? There had been numerous smaller ones along their route, but none of them were remotely this pronounced.

  “There’s something about that route that’s important,” Melody muttered.

  “I thought you said you took this route many times?”

  If she heard him, his words didn’t register. Instead, she said, “Something lies at the end of that path.”

  “So, that’s the path we need to take?” Silurian asked, itching to get moving.

  “No,” Melody started, then corrected herself, “well maybe. I don’t know. Phazarus said I need to remember something, but I can’t remember what that that was.”

  “So, just to get this straight. You have committed to memory every one of those magical tomes, and even more that are only passed down orally, and yet, you can’t remember whether we need to go into that huge canyon spur?”

  Flustered, Melody stomped about, examining the path they were on, and the new one entering the fissure to their right. “You were here before, too. Don’t you know how you got back out? According to Phazarus, there is only one way for the living to escape the Gap, so you must’ve taken it.”

  “That was twenty-five years ago, and none of us were paying attention to where we were going. We were too busy watching for whatever chased us from behind.”

  “Ya, well, I guess I wasn’t paying attention either because I honestly have no idea whether the untravelled path is before or after this fissure.”

  Silurian rubbed his face with his hands, trying not to become overly cross. Taking a deep breath, he said as calmly as possible, “Look Mel, if you aren’t able to recall how to get out of here, we may as well go back to the cave…Oh, wait a minute. You blew that up.”

  Melody was on the verge of tears. She had never been one for directions. She had been too absorbed in the old wizard’s teachings to pay attention to their surroundings. Think Mel, think. He must have said something while we walked through here.

  Silurian’s voice cut through her addled thoughts, “Sorry, but this is up to you. There is less than a ghost of a chance that I would know…” he trailed off as comprehension transformed Melody’s features. “What?”

  “That’s it!” Melody walked into the yawning chasm, disappearing into dark shadows. “Ghosts. The Spectre Wood.” She nodded her forehead into the canyon spur. “This chasm leads into the heart of Spectre Wood.”

  Silurian mouthed the words, “Spectre Wood?”

  “A vast forest on the northern shores of the Lake of the Lost. It serves as a buffer between the Wilds, the Inner World, or Forbidden Swamp as most call it, and the Kraidic Empire.”

  “So?” Silurian prompted.

  “So,” Melody said with renewed purpose, “the untravelled path is the one nobody wishes to walk. The one that leads into Spectre Wood.”

  Silurian frowned, clearly confused.

  “Spectre Wood is a tract of land haunted by ancient spirits. No one in their right mind would travel into it, thus, the path we seek is the one that remains untravelled.”

  “I’m lost.”

  Melody smiled for the first time in a while. “Ya? Well, I’m not. Come on, we’re close.” She stepped free of the shadows and started south, walking past the side chasm.

  “Shouldn’t we be going that way?” Silurian pointed back into the dark fissure.

  “Most assuredly,” Melody responded, a skip in her step as she kept walking.

  Silurian hurried to catch up to her.

  “The untravelled path will eventually end up going that way, but if I remember correctly, it actually starts farther up this way. Hidden just beyond that bend in the wall up there, if I’m not mistaken.” She pointed with the top of her staff. “The untravelled path gives the illusion that it ascends the gorge southward, but unseen along the wall above, it doubles back and heads into the fissure toward Spectre Wood.”

  “Well then, let’s be off.” Silurian smiled back, seemingly walking lighter than he had for days.

  Rounding the sharp angled wall, the beginnings of a path rose from the desolate Gap floor. As one, they gasped. At the entrance to the coveted path, a massive creature waited for them, head hung
low and haunches raised. The creature resembled a black panther, but it was unlike any panther Melody had heard tell of. The sleek creature, easily twice the length of a full-grown man, glowered at them with bared upper fangs as long as her forearm, curving down over its slathering lower lip.

  She shrieked, eliciting a throaty growl from the creature.

  Silurian stood still, his eyes never leaving the feral cat. He pulled his sword free of its scabbard.

  Melody stood frozen at Silurian’s side. Her wizard training kicked in and she uttered words that were unintelligible to her brother. Words she had learned over and over and over again.

  Waiting for the creature’s inevitable attack, Silurian muttered, “No wonder they call it the untravelled path.”

  The cat started toward them. Slowly. Methodically.

  As calmly as possible, Melody incanted a spell Phazarus had taught her by word of mouth. She’d never actually used it before, at least not on a living creature, but facing the sabre-toothed panther, the spell had jumped to the forefront of her mind. If she could recite the proper words fast enough, she was confident she could put a quick end to the abomination.

  With a sudden emphasis on the last word, she stepped in front of her brother and thrust her staff before her.

  Hidden runes along the length of the dark wooden staff glowed bright orange for but a moment before the air about her crackled with energy. A visible wave of air accelerated toward the panther, taking the cat full in the face, slamming its immense bulk into the canyon wall.

  Melody staggered backward under the force of the spell’s release. Steadying herself, her eyes widened in horror. Instead of vapourizing the menace, she had duplicated it.

  Throne of Ash

  Pollard’s strength was incredible. Big as he was, he shouldn’t have been able to move the blocks of stone that he did. Rook shook his head at the red-faced colossus as he hoisted a piece of the collapsed gatehouse and staggered away from the pile—four men would have struggled to lift it. People got out of his way lest he drop the block on their feet. Yarstaff followed in Pollard’s wake, carrying a decent sized chunk of stone, his alien face covered in grime.