The Druid's Guise: The Complete Trilogy (The Druid's Guise Trilogy)

by Michael J Sanford

  D’umbra turned and scowled at the child who returned a sheepish look and dropped his head. He sighed and turned back to Wyatt. “It is so. Though very hard to work with, sap can be dried and sculpted to suit a variety of needs. When properly handled by a skilled sculptor the sap becomes a stiff resin, nearly unbreakable.”

  “Sounds like a great thing for armor and weapons.”

  Wyatt looked up to see Athena smirking from the staircase, surrounded by elven children. D’umbra grunted. “Hardened resin alone is more akin to thunder glass than iron, though one can create magnificent alloys. Though, of course, an elf needs no armor, just…”

  “…THE SHADOWS,” bellowed the children in unison.

  Athena rolled her eyes dramatically and tousled the hair of a nearby elf.

  “Very good,” D’umbra continued with an approving nod. “Sometimes it is unwise to face an opponent head on. Subterfuge is often safer and more effective. The enemy cannot hope to defeat what it does not know exists. Why, I should say it may even serve to capture a mighty Druid…”

  The room erupted into laughter. Wyatt folded his arms and feigned disinterest in the whole scene, but could not hold back a lopsided grin. “I was only captured because I wanted to be,” he claimed. The room roared louder. Part of Wyatt wanted to be mad, but he could not deny the fact that he had been the elves’ mercy, lashed to a pine. Looking around the crowded room, he decided it was altogether impossible to feel anything but joy with so many children hooting and hollering.

  Eventually the laughter died down and the children settled in once again. D’umbra wiped tears from his bearded face and made a show of shaking them off. He cleared his throat, coughed deep and loud, and shifted his position on the branch. “Now,” he said. “What else can we teach the—”

  A dozen hands hit the air, but D’umbra had abandoned his question and bolted upright. He turned his face upward, sniffing loudly. Wyatt stared across the room, locking eyes with Athena. He shrugged and rolled his eyes, but Athena returned only a solemn look.

  “Smoke,” D’umbra said, still twisting and tasting the air. “D’jera, be a dear and check the torches, all levels. Fast as you can.”

  A spry female with long brown hair twisted and braided into a thick coil leapt up and dashed for the stairs, leaping over her peers with deftness and grace.

  “What’s wrong?” Wyatt said, trying to read D’umbra’s wooly face.

  The sapper shook his head. “I am sure it is nothing. Likely one of the young ‘uns bumped into a torch and spilled some sap. Nothing to worry over, but when you’ve worked with the sap as long as I have,” he touched a finger to the side of his hooked nose, “you learn to pick up on even the faintest whiff of sap smoke.”

  “Aren’t the pines full of the stuff?” Wyatt asked, his mind worrying over an indistinguishable idea. “If the stuff is so dangerous…then…” Suddenly, the Sapper seemed to be the worst place to be in hopes of protecting the children.

  “It is our livelihood, Master Druid,” D’umbra said. “Dangerous it may be, but most near anything in life can be dangerous if mistreated. The sap is no different than your friend’s blade.” He turned and nodded in Athena’s direction. “Is a blade inherently dangerous? Good? Evil? No, it is just a blade. A flat piece of metal with a sharp edge. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Wyatt nodded and absently traced a finger around the edges of the pulsing stone embedded in his chest. “I guess you’re right,” he agreed. “Maybe they should call you the Wise and call D’orca something else.”

  D’umbra smiled and shook his head. “Your words are kind, but I am no Deceiver. I work the sap. That is all.”

  “What’s a Deceiver, anyway?”

  D’umbra turned and gestured for the children to take the question. He nodded to a tall male at his side.

  “Deceivers watch over the pines and protect the Coven from discovery or attack.”

  “Oh, they’re like soldiers or warriors,” Wyatt said.

  D’umbra nodded and patted the child on the head.

  “And the feathers?” Wyatt said, thinking of the thick nest D’orca kept atop his head.

  D’umbra turned to his other side and called for another to answer. An energetic female with a slight build jumped up and stood at attention. Some of the others giggled.

  “Harpy feathers,” she said firmly. “Proof of a Deceiver’s…well, deceptions.”

  The children giggled again and the girl frowned at them as she sat back down. D’umbra nodded.

  Before Wyatt could press further, D’jera stumbled down the staircase, leading a trail of equally enthusiastic children. They pressed into the already cramped room, jostling among the others. D’jera clambered over heads and shoulders, rolled over a branch, spun, and dusted herself off before D’umbra. She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed.

  “The torches?” D’umbra asked.

  She shook her head. “Not the torches. The wall.”

  D’umbra cocked his head to the side, grabbed his beard in both hands and looked toward the staircase. “The wall?”

  “Yes, sir,” D’jera said. “It’s…uh…the wall, it’s…burning.”

  A ripple of gasps went through the children who had not followed D’jera from the upper floors. D’umbra stiffened, his eyes flashing wide. Wyatt stood as well, sniffed as D’umbra had done…and smelled it. A faint, but distinctive scent hung in the air. It reminded Wyatt of the time he had helped his grandmother bake sugar cookies and had fallen into a comic book, forgetting to remove them from the oven. The house smelled of burnt sweetness for days. The Sapper building smelled as such, though there was something else in the air he sensed as well. No, it was not in the air, but in the pines outside the building. Fae. He had been so distracted that he had not noticed their presence. But he heard them now. His chest ached and his hands curled into claws.

  “They’ve set fire to the upper floor,” Maia cried out. The spriteling slid beside Athena atop the stairs, her eyes wide.

  The children screamed in unison and pressed tighter into the bottom floor, packing around Wyatt and D’umbra. They turned to the Druid and the grizzled sapper with pleas for rescue.

  “Silence!” D’umbra shouted, his voice thick with insistence, his arms raking at the air. “Settle down. It will be all right. The Fae have yet to best the Coven, for they cannot defeat what…”

  Some of the children were too busy fretting over the situation on the third floor, but others shouted out, “…they cannot see!”

  “It is so,” D’umbra bellowed. “Come, children, crowd in tight around me now.” The crowd shifted and few additional elves jumped down the stairs. Athena and Maia remained vigilant over their new flock. Wyatt turned his attention to the whisper, seeking out the Fae, hungering for their lives. “Good,” D’umbra said when all the children had fallen silent and were pressed shoulder to shoulder. “The Fae are cowards. They think they can smoke us out. They hide behind fire and violence, but they will not prevail. We are elven. Long have we dwelt in these pines and long will we dwell here after tonight. Now listen. You must follow the spriteling and the human warrior,” he nodded toward the stairs, “They will lead you from here. Seek out the shadows and hide within their cloak, silent and vigilant, as you have been taught.”

  “What about the Fae?” Wyatt said. “They’re trying to burn their way in.” The stench of smoke had grown stronger. So, did the power looming within Wyatt’s chest. His fingers twitched violently and his heart was beating double-time.

  “I feared as much,” D’umbra said. “You and I, Druid, will give the Fae what they seek.”

  Wyatt grinned.

  “Now, go,” D’umbra shouted to the room. He nodded sharply at Athena and Maia. The two never missed a beat. Athena shouldered her silver sword and pushed through the room, headed for the door. Maia stayed at the rear, softly humming.

  Athena placed a hand on the stout wooden door and turned back to Wyatt. “Give ‘em hell, Wy’,” she said with a wicked s
mile.

  Wyatt nodded. Athena pulled the door open, peered cautiously outside and waved on her followers. Wyatt fought his way to the wall as dozens of unsettled elven children poured past. As Maia reached the open doorway, she placed a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. She continued to hum the soft song, and smiled gently at him. Then she was gone, the door shut behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  AN EERIE SILENCE fell over the barren Sapper. Wyatt hated the silence. More than the shadows that taunted him from the corners. He forced a cough to dispel it.

  “Are ye ready, Druid?”

  Wyatt scowled for a moment. Master, he thought. Call me Master. But instead he nodded, clutched at his chest, and headed for the stairs.

  “Hold up,” D’umbra called.

  Wyatt turned, not intending to stop, and saw D’umbra extending a metal ladle.

  “Extinguish the torches as ye climb,” he said, handing Wyatt the snuffer with a wink. “The darkness will be both our cloak and blade.”

  Wyatt again had to stifle a comment in regards to such a cowardly way of fighting, but he knew it to be true. He dreaded conspiring with the shadows, but knew them to be an ally in their situation. He swallowed a moment of dread, coughed aside a flinch of fear, and snuffed the nearest torch.

  They worked their way slowly upward, extinguishing torches as they went, gliding from ember to ember in shared silence. Each passing moment plunged the Sapper further into darkness and silence.

  “Have you fought the Fae, D’umbra?” Wyatt asked as the last of the second-floor torches was put out and the pair headed for the stairs.

  “No,” he said. “Admittedly, I’ve never even seen a faerie. As I said, I’m no Deceiver, and the Fae have never dared to attack the Coven directly. Up until now we’ve only seen brief skirmishes between our two homes. And for the last two seasons we’ve lived in relative peace, thanks to D’orca.”

  Wyatt’s heart dropped to his stomach, but the raging hunger in his chest stifled it just as his snuffer blackened the first torch on the third floor. “Well, don’t worry. I am a Druid after all.”

  “Cmettef Novez,” D’umbra exclaimed.

  “Hey, I am!” Wyatt exclaimed, thinking the cryptic outburst was directed at his boast.

  D’umbra grabbed Wyatt by the shoulder and spun him to face the far wall. The third floor was much larger than the first, easily a hundred feet wide in both directions and was crowded with an assortment of barrels, crates, and strange, metal equipment. The far wall was lined with a row of stout wooden barrels, banded with iron rings. Behind the barrels, the wall was on fire.

  A thirty-foot swatch of the thick wooden wall glowed orange and red, smoldering and filling the room with sweet smoke. Wyatt could see no flames, but knew they would come should the wall fall. It looked ready to crumble into embers at any moment. Some spots had already grown black and ash covered.

  “It won’t be long now,” D’umbra said. “Quickly, the torches.”

  Wyatt didn’t bother arguing this time, not even to himself, the surge of adrenaline forbade it and sent his hands shaking with tremendous energy. Moving with increased speed, D’umbra and Wyatt darkened the remaining twelve torches and hunkered down behind a stack of crates in the middle of the room. They watched the burning wall with hesitant expectation.

  “They’re out there,” Wyatt said absently, his mind turned to the pulsing stream of life beyond the blaze.

  “They think to catch the Coven unaware,” D’umbra said. Then he laughed.

  A fist size chunk of burning wall fell, bouncing off a barrel. The wall hissed at the sudden gush of air flowing through the small opening.

  Heat beat at Wyatt’s face. “What’s in those barrels?” he asked, though something told him he already knew.

  D’umbra laughed again and pulled on his beard. The dim glow of the embers turned his grizzled face into a mask of wickedness. “Sap,” he said with great pleasure. “All ten of ‘em. Filled to the brim.”

  Wyatt looked away and studied the giant casks. Some of the iron bands were beginning to glow red. Another piece of the wall fell away. Flames reached through the opening like ghostly fingers, licking at the ceiling, hungry just as he was.

  “And sap is extremely flammable?”

  D’umbra gripped the crate with ferocious eagerness. His wide smile flickered eerily. “It just so happened that our friends, the Fae, have chosen the worst spot to burn through. They are soon to find how cruel a lover luck can be.”

  Wyatt watched the large elf and nodded, understanding. He crouched a little lower against the crate, but smiled as well. With a crackle and hiss, a large section of the wall crumbled inward, followed by a blast of molten air. Wyatt felt as if his hair was likely to combust as he and D’umbra ducked behind the crate for shelter.

  The first barrel of sap went off like a bomb. The room lit up with light and heat as if the sun had fallen atop them. A pressure wave ripped through the third floor of the Sapper, sending crates and equipment scattering. The large crate mitigated most the heat, but was pushed back with violent force, taking with it Wyatt and D’umbra.

  The flash and concussion left Wyatt blind and deaf for several moments as he was sent sprawling to the far side the room. Detritus pelted him as he curled into a fetal position, silently praying to every god he knew.

  He couldn’t tell how long he lay there, praying not to be impaled or engulfed in hot flame, but at some point, a strong hand wrested him upright. Wyatt shook his head and coughed violently. The air was thick with black smoke and he fell at once to his knees, seeking clean air.

  D’umbra crouched beside him, clothes torn and scorched, but altogether well. He was grinning. Wyatt shook his head again and patted himself down, searching for injuries. He found nothing new and quickly scanned the room. A majority of the far wall was gone, bright embers burning along the fractured edges of a giant opening. Illumination from countless fires poured in from the forest. It cast light on the disarray. The detonation had tossed everything away from the blast point, leaving a clear section of floor. Wyatt and D’umbra hid among a pile of broken wood and twisted iron at the far side.

  “That’ll show ‘em,” D’umbra said with a coarse chuckle that turned into a throaty cough. The sapper crouched lower, going to his hands and knees.

  Wyatt didn’t return the merry celebration. He pressed his hands tight to the floor, closed his eyes, and searched the stream of voices that ran thick around him. Everything held life and Wyatt could sense it all. It was dizzying and overwhelming, but after a moment, he found the stream he was seeking.

  “They’re still out there,” he said, eyes opening and scanning the distant forest. “And they’re coming.”

  “Stubborn bastards,” D’umbra said with a grunt. “Well, let them come. It’d be a shame if I died unfeathered.”

  The round elf grabbed up a length of bent pipe and crawled off through the wreckage, quickly disappearing among the carnage and shadows. Wyatt remained in place. He needed no weapon. He was one.

  It didn’t take long before a lone faerie dropped into view. It buzzed into the room and settled just inside the opening, folding its wings tight to its back. A silver longsword shone brightly in his hand. He scanned the room slowly, once, then twice. Wyatt grinned from the shadows. He knew the faerie could see nothing but blackness. The fires were too bright, the shadows too dark.

  The faerie took a tentative step into the gloom and two more warriors swooped in behind him. One was a female, tall and gaunt, the bony ridges along her face and forearms appearing black as sin. The other, a male, was thick and well-muscled. Both wielded matching swords. The male held a small circular shield of painted wood and iron studs. Wyatt laughed silently to himself, knowing what the elves would say of the cowardice.

  Wyatt watched intently from the sanctuary of the shadows, studying his prey. Something arced through the smoke near the far wall and struck the lead male in the temple. The trio whirled to their left in unison, weapons at the ready.
Wyatt never saw D’umbra or the thick iron pipe, but the sickening noise it made against the side of the lead faerie’s skull was palpable. Wyatt was pleasantly stunned. How had D’umbra gotten behind them?

  The faerie collapsed at the feet of his comrades, dark blood pooling from what had once been a head. The two remaining faeries spun at the sound and shouted at the sight. Wyatt could not understand their words, but he understood their meaning. They should be scared, he thought.

  The Fae did not retreat, however, but stepped further into the room, each skirting the corpse. Wyatt brought his feet beneath him into a readied crouch. He knew it was only a matter of time before their eyes adjusted to the shadows, and the hunger within him was growing too fierce to ignore. He could taste the life within the pair of faeries. He could hear the voices. The whisper. He wanted it.

  Before he could act, another projectile spun through the hot air and hit the female in the back of the head, but instead of spinning to locate the source, she lunged forward and swung blindly at the darkness. Her silver sword whistled through the air and then caught something solid. Wyatt heard a loud grunt. The shadows were too deceiving to allow him to see what was embedded beneath the silver sword, but he didn’t need his eyes. He turned his mind to the sword, traveled down the silent blade, and rested on the quickly fading voice pinned beneath its edge.

  The faerie ripped the sword free and spun back to the larger room. D’umbra hit the floor with a loud thud. Wyatt faltered for a moment, his mind off the faeries and on the fallen sapper, but the hunger brought him back to center. He readied his mind, zeroing in on the female with the bloodied blade. He thought of charging and shouting with all he was worth, but he didn’t. The shadows were the greatest weapon he had. Shadows and death. He grinned at the thought now. The darkness was to be feared. He had been right about that. But now, hidden within their shroud, he was the terror. He was the nightmare.

  The pair of faeries walked slowly into the middle of the room while Wyatt silently crept around the border. Smoldering embers had been cast all over the room when the barrel of sap had detonated, and now small flames curled from a hundred locations. The room was slowly coming to life. He had no time. In another moment, the darkness would be banished.