Melforger (The Melforger Chronicles) (29 page)

He moved off to relieve himself behind some bushes as Tiponi strolled up the path, scanning the ground, before kneeling down and unearthing a fist-sized rock from the dirt. He walked back to Raf, dusting the rock down, and gave it him.

Raf took his knife out and set to running the blade carefully up and down the side of the rock, absorbing himself in the task to calm down and settle his thoughts.

OK. I’m out of the Forest. Actually on solid ground. No
Ancients
anywhere, just… little trees. This is… incredible.

By the time he managed to get the knife sharp enough to prepare the birds, Tiponi had set a small fire up and Bolyai was cleaning some strange potatoes he had found. Rather than the small round ones that they occasionally ate in the Forest, these were huge – a foot long each - and a pale red color.

“If you’re thirsty,” said Bolyai, “I’m sure Tiponi can show you how to find some waterwort nearby. You should learn how to do that now because after the mountains, water will become a problem.”

Raf could only purse his lips in confusion and look at Tiponi blankly. The iMahli gestured for him to follow. They walked down the path until Tiponi grunted and pointed at a tiny purple flower growing up through some dry grass.

“
Shuji
. If you find it, there is water under.” As he was explaining, he demonstrated by scooping dirt away in a circle around the flower. “This root comes out.”

Under the flower was a huge round turnip-like root that Tiponi pulled up. It was surprisingly big - head-sized - and when he cut into it, a succulent cream-colored flesh was exposed. Taking Raf’s knife, he scraped it sideways along the inner flesh of the root until he had a handful of soggy splinters. He squeezed them in his hand over his tilted head, and a line of water trickled into his open mouth.

He passed the knife back to Raf. “Now you.”

It was quite easy to do - although you didn’t get a huge amount of liquid out of the handfuls; but it was cool and had the slightest suggestion of sweetness to it.

It’s not a watervine, but at least it does the job,
Raf thought.

He stood up when he’d finished, and after making sure he could recognize the flower in the future, walked back to the others with the other half of the root for Bolyai. Not long after, Raf was finishing a crispy wing as Bolyai put the fire out and ground up some of the waterwort.

“How is your shoulder, Tiponi?”

The iMahli shrugged. “There is pain, but it will heal.”

“Maybe we can speed it up with some aloe,” said the Elder. “Don’t want it to get infected.”

He retrieved a small bag from the wagon which had some damp leaves folded inside it. Crushing some of the aloe in his hands, he began rubbing it softly onto Tiponi’s wound. “I know it hurts at first, but this will make it better quicker.” He glanced at Raf. ”Do you remember the
haelanayre
?”

Raf nodded vaguely as he stared at Tiponi’s shoulder, failing to notice the peculiar look that Bolyai gave him. The Elder started singing softly and Raf accompanied him, watching the Elder’s hands move gently along the wound. It was an easy, lilting melody and he found his eyes closing as he sang along.

Even in the glare of the setting sun, he found the sudden glimmer of colors in his mind dazzling. He didn’t flinch from it though, and let it swell around him in its now familiar way.

He focused in on the welt and saw that, while it wasn’t as intense as the mass of threads that he’d seen with Jan, there was definitely a small streak of darkness. And as with before, he could make out a subtle drifting of blue mist towards the dark patch. He also thought he felt a peculiar sense of someone else there, another connection to the colors. 

So, it
was
the Elder! He definitely knows how to use it too.

He watched as the colors moved towards the patch, inch by inch. It was very slow though, so Raf concentrated and threw himself wading forwards into the color. He had hardly even started thinking about trying to heal him when a sapphire streak crystallized out of the surrounding mist and swept in, as thick as syrup. It poured over the blackness where the wound was, completely filling and saturating it. In seconds, he could see that the dark patch was no longer there; it had been completely erased.

Raf smiled, and then for a brief moment his awareness switched to a more external one and he heard himself singing alone.

Not again…

He opened his eyes and saw the Elder not two feet from him. His face bore an expression of disbelief that made Raf’s heart leap into his throat.

“
You
,” whispered Bolyai. The haggard old man was crouched with one knee on the ground, pointing a finger at him.
He stood up slowly and stepped closer to him, pushing the finger hard into Raf’s chest. “What color was it, boy?” 

“I don’t know wh- ”

“What
color
was it?” hissed the Elder.

“I… blue, I think? I don’t know what you m…” stammered Raf desperately. “How did you know? Did you see it, too?”

The Elder gaped at him, his mouth quivering slightly. His arm slowly lowered until it lay against his side again. “I knew
it,” he whispered. “I
knew
there was one there. It was you in the tree, wasn’t it? And you with the sick woodsmith.”

Then, to Raf’s astonishment, the Elder tilted his head back and suddenly erupted into a husky laugh, clenching his gnarled fists in front of him and pumping them up and down.

Raf tried to quickly get up, but as he did he came face to face with Tiponi who was staring at him wildly, one arm hooked back rubbing his shoulder.

Bolyai bent over to catch his breath, wheezing, and then beckoned to Raf. “Listen to me,” he said slowly. “Your Bard - the one who was banished?”

“What about him?”

“When you went to speak to him, did he tell you anything about music?
Old
music?”

“No….”

“He never mentioned anything to you about music? That’s… a pity.” Bolyai looked away deep in thought. “It was lucky I came when I did. So old already…. but, never mind, it’s still… after so long… to find one…”

“What are you talking about?” begged Raf.

“I don’t even know where to start, boy,” said Bolyai. “If you learnt nothing from your Bard -”

“He’s an idiot!” said Raf. “He was always drunk and going on about crazy stuff. Music, and something about it being food for plants, and he called it menfi… meg... – well, something about foraging, or -“

Bolyai interrupted Raf by laughing again, his head tilting back up to the sky. “Indeed! Coincidence? I think not… The boy already knows of melforging -”

“Melforger! That’s it!” cut in Raf. “I remember now, a melforger! But, what
is
it?”

Nodding slowly to himself, Bolyai looked up at Raf.

“That, boy, is what you are.”

R
af tenderly rubbed some shea butter on the back of his neck, grimacing at the sharp sting of the exposed reddened skin above his tunic.

“No good putting it on
now
, boy. You should have done it yesterday afternoon when we first left the Forest.”

Raf ignored the Elder and stretched his neck, feeling the onset of a dull headache. They’d been travelling for hours now since they’d left at dawn, and without an
Ancient
in sight, there was hardly any cover above to block off the brutal sun when it slid up over the horizon. It was so hot. The heat seemed to push down on him like a blanket, squeezing the moisture right out of his body.

“Should we continue our chat, then?”

Raf shook his head irritably. “It’s no good, Elder. It’s just pointless.”

Bolyai looked up at the skies and muttered, “First one in over a hundred years and it
would
be a whiny teenager.”

He turned to Raf with feigned patience. “Maybe a different song would be better? If you only try what I was saying, y-”

“- I don’t know what you mean, though,” interrupted Raf. “You talk about holding the color? That’s not really how it works for me.”

“Well, how do you use it, boy?  Explain to me, then I can try to help you.”

“I don’t know!” replied Raf. “It’s complicated. I don’t
use
it, I sort of move with it. I don’t know…” He groaned. “It’s so hot. I just want to be cool for a bit…”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” said the Elder. “You must learn to harness it, even if you have to start with small steps. It’s a skill that hasn’t been seen for generations and I haven’t met many other Elders, even, who were melforgers. There’s only me and a few others, and none of us could do what you did to Tiponi’s shoulder as quickly, or even half as well.”

At hearing his name, the iMahli glanced back at them. He hadn’t said a word to Raf since the incident, although when he looked at him, it was with an odd, unreadable expression.

Probably thinks I’m some sort of freak
, Raf thought.

He found his eyes drawn yet again to the dark man’s shoulder, and searched for any evidence of the vicious welt that had been there only the night before. There was absolutely nothing. If there was even a scar, it was so faint as to be almost invisible.

He chewed his lip and forced himself to look up at the path, noting wearily that there didn’t seem to be an end in sight of the shallow rolling hill-tops. More and more common here was a strange tree that Bolyai told him was called an acacia.

A pretty name for a pretty unfriendly looking tree.

From a distance, they looked like soft green umbrellas, but up close, their branches and leaves were laden with countless small thorns. He was staring at a little copse of them in the distance when he noticed some movement underneath. Squinting, he stared hard, not believing his eyes; until they got close enough to get a clear view, and his mouth fell open. They were birds. But huge! With thick feathered bodies on top of long wiry legs and a neck that almost doubled their height, all of them would have towered at least a foot above Tiponi.

The iMahli had also spotted them. “There. We change for these.” He nodded at the goats pulling
the wagon

“What?” Raf sat up, his face twisting with suspicion. “What’s he saying?”

Bolyai looked at him and the tiniest smile creased his mouth. “You heard him. The goats won’t do well in these conditions, let alone once we get out into the real plains, so we must change them at this farmstead for some ostriches,” continued Bolyai patiently.

“Wait,” said Raf standing up. “Wait. We’re going to travel into the plains, the dangerous plains I’ve heard about? Pulled by these ‘ostriches’, as you call them? You’re not just pulling my leg here because I’ve never left the Forest before?” Bolyai sighed and gave Tiponi a dry look. “I mean, seriously, Elder, I’m really going to travel in a wagon pulled by some birds?”

“I suppose you could try to ride one yourself, if you wanted,” said Bolyai. “But they can kick something fierce and their talons are razor sharp.”

Raf slouched down heavily on the floor and rubbed his temples. “Too much sun, I’ve just had too much sun. Dad was right.”

They reached the pen with the ostriches, and a small group of iMahlis emerged from the shade of some acacias, walking up to greet Tiponi. They clapped their hands in front of their chests a few times and spoke to him in a way that seemed deferential, and Raf was reminded again that their friend was an iMahli of some stature.

The meeting didn’t take long and after a few glances past Tiponi to the wagon, the deal appeared to be done. Tiponi untied the goats and led them into a pen, whilst the other iMahlis selected two ostriches and led them out by the thin harnesses they wore.

Raf noted that the two they had picked were larger than the rest, and their plumage completely different to the others. While most of the birds in the pen were a dull mottled brown, these two had a mix of tightly packed black feathers over the majority of their bodies, with startling flashes of white peeking out from under their wings and atop the small fan of tail feathers.

He watched warily as they were harnessed to the wagon, taking in their talons which did indeed look capable of causing serious damage, and the large beaks from which there was an occasional low hissing. Their eyes were dark brown and stared impassively at Raf as the cords were all tightened. He decided he would keep his distance from the monstrous birds and tried to inconspicuously move to the back of the wagon.

With another round of short claps, the iMahlis bid them farewell and Tiponi jumped up to take the reins. With a powerful heave from the birds, the wagon lurched into motion back towards the path. Tiponi clicked his tongue when they reached it and directed the birds to cross over into the dry grassland that covered the whole area.

“They can certainly move,” muttered Raf, holding on to the sides as the wheels bounced over the uneven terrain. The ostriches’ long necks were taut as their legs pumped furiously, kicking up sand and debris from the path.