Feynard (25 page)

Kevin
’s weary eyes had detected strong signs of Blight on the leaves of bushes at his eye level. He had just called Zephyr to point this out, when the Unicorn stopped in his tracks and sniffed the air. He turned pale.

A monstrous roar split the air and one of the X’gäthi came flying through the bushes towards them as though shot from a cannon–luckily, gaining a soft landing in a bristling
rotorberry bush, but he would be picking thorns out of his hide for the rest of that lighttime.

A great stench of dead things in the height of their corruption and decay preceded the creature.
Then the Yatakê pushed into view and all else was forgotten. Kevin’s first impression was of an armoured bear. The snout was long and pointed, packed with triangular teeth more suited to shark, and anchored by a thick-muscled neck to a hulking pair of shoulders comfortably twice the size of Snatcher’s. It brushed aside a maggar tree, ignoring the attacking shadows of X’gäthi warriors. Its red eyes, narrowed with hatred and malice, stared right at Kevin, and when it saw him it reared up on its hind legs and roared a second time. Four great paws spread wide, brandishing for all to see claws like meat-hooks still stained with the blood of its last victim, and a ridged, chitinous armour protecting its underbelly. One set of such arms would have been fearsome enough. Two was terrifying.

It made a beeline for him.

Zephyr aimed his horn and let fly with a cloud of smoke which latched unerringly onto the creature’s head and clung there as though glued, covering its eyes completely. Akê-Akê fired as fast as he could, but his arrows only stuck in the tough hide. Though the creature was losing blood from numerous cuts inflicted by the X’gäthi, it oriented on Kevin, despite Zephyr’s cloud, and moved forward with ponderous certainty. The terrified Human back-pedalled, trying to dodge behind bushes and trees that the monstrous Yatakê simply pushed over or through.

Twice more Zephyr loosed his magic, once in a gout of white fire that sizzled even through the air before hitting the
Yatakê full in the chest and throat. The second time, he used a powder to deflect and confuse it, allowing time for the Lurk to drop Alliathiune in a safe place and return, bellowing his anger, to the fray–and his blows, at last, had an effect on their immense foe. His strikes with that gigantic club sounded like a woodsman attacking a tree with his mightiest timber-axe, falling with a clean crack upon limbs and joints. Kevin, who was still scrambling for dear life, suddenly found time to regain his composure. There was a dull ache in his thigh, but he ignored it.

With its magic-enhanced
speed, the Yatakê caught Snatcher up in its four mighty arms and jerked him bodily off the ground. Its hands locked behind his back. The corded muscles along its back and shoulders leaped into sharp relief. Its power was immense, the power of ancient evil hideously clothed in flesh and bone. The Lurk groaned and struggled, fighting to get its paws free before the snapping jaws found his head. Their roars mingled and rose, shaking the Forest to its very roots. Distinctly, through it all, Kevin heard bones crunching and tendons creaking under the tremendous strain. The Lurk was strong, but the Yatakê was stronger still and more massive. Despite eight X’gäthi warriors hacking at the creature’s legs and back, it gave no sign of letting up. Akê-Akê, having withheld his arrows for fear of striking the Lurk, leaped in with a mace to help the X’gäthi.

“Can we not do something?”
Kevin shrilled, fearful now that Snatcher would be crushed as he surely must be under that devastating pressure.

“I have spells, but those would harm our own!”

But then Snatcher struck back. Swinging his left leg from the hip, he rammed his armoured knee into the Yatakê’s groin. And again. The creature grunted. And a third time. Now it shuddered. Two arms tore loose to batter Snatcher’s head–but this suited the Lurk’s plan. Wrenching his shoulders sideways, he found leverage and swung his head upward at an angle. His mouth yawned open, wider than ever before, and shut like a steel trap over the Yatakê’s lower jawbone. Kevin had learned that Lurks have jaw muscles comparable to a crocodile’s, but without the leverage of the longer construction. Put rocks between a Lurk’s back molars, though, and they could pulverise granite. With the additional stimulus of pain and adrenaline, the Lurk clamped down with all his strength, trying to shear that Yatakê’s lower jaw clean off.

The creature went berserk.

With deafening howls, the monstrous creature crashed back and forth between the trees in an attempt to unseat its tormentor. Its fists beat the Lurk’s back and head, but Snatcher only bit down the harder. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, the Yatakê convulsed and tore itself loose, leaving its entire lower jawbone in Snatcher’s mouth. Blood burst from the open hole in its throat. Yet still, it charged the Lurk once more and drove him with all its might backwards into the trunk of a kalar. Kevin distinctly heard something snap. But Snatcher lifted his legs, levered the Yatakê off, and using the tree as his springboard, tackled the creature around the knees. An almighty crash shook the Forest. Dust flew everywhere. The X’gäthi leaped in as one man.

But when the dust settled, only the
Yatakê lay unmoving.

*  *  *  *

“So, before she fell, Alliathiune was teaching you about the Forest?” asked Zephyr, falling into step with Kevin, about an hour after the Yatakê had been defeated.

“Berries, bushes, trees, animals, insects–what she doesn’t know of the Forest …”

“You grow fond of the Dryad.”

Kevin regarded the Unicorn with wary eyes. “The wisdom of which I doubt.”

“What cares the heart for wisdom, good outlander? But you could not pick a more able teacher than one part-vegetable.”

“I suspect Alliathiune would slap you for that comment, good Unicorn.” He looked ahead to the Lurk, carrying Alliathiune, tirelessly pushing his way through a thicket of horn-berry bushes. Inedible, he reminded himself. Useful as a green dye. The Lurk was an excellent trailbreaker. He simply walked through or over most things.

His mind served up an image of him kissing a carrot. Kevin sighed. He was as far from romance as Feynard probably was from Earth. And Alliathiune was steadily turning more plant than she had ever wanted to be.

“She
spoke at length of the balance of nature, of this Forest’s intricate lifecycles and dependencies and habitats,” he said, hoping to distract the Unicorn from his gentle teasing. “It’s so detailed! So perfect, in ways I never imagined! It’s similar to what this book says about magic. But I wish you would stop calling me High Wizard Muckity-Muck, Zephyr, because you can’t be a high anything and be as ignorant as me. I thought wizards should be enormously learned.”

“And I am
enormously learned, you flatterer,” Zephyr simpered, with such false modesty Kevin had to chuckle. “Allow me to share with you a Unicorn jewel of wisdom. No magic is done in isolation. All magic has consequences. What you saw earlier–that Yatakê–was a consequence. It is like unto the laws of motion you described to me.”

“Every action–”

“–has an equal and opposite reaction?”

“Indeed. But this isn’t
entirely true of magic. Put otherwise, the laws of magic are not one and the same as the laws of the physical universe.” Kevin had the impression that if the Unicorn were a professor, he would have adjusted his spectacles before launching into his lecture. “Your tome is a fine work, good Kevin. But does it teach that magic can kill? That the consequences can be out of all proportion to the error? The Dark One thought he knew how to raise demons, his Yatakê. But they nigh destroyed him. Dryads used to travel this way to their Sacred Grove. Now the demons hunt them mercilessly. I tell you further, magical backlash can destroy a wizard. And–you can’t destroy magic.”

Kevin, who had been shaking his head, said, “But I imagined that like gravity versus anti-gravity, you could have anti-magic–at least, theoretically.”

“Oh, you can have anti-magic,” the Unicorn replied. “But it’s a force in its own right. It is a power far more dangerous and unpredictable than the direct application of magic.”

“Which I struggle with.”

“You have the patience of a nisk fly.”

“I find them awfully stubborn. My neck tells that tale eloquently.”

“Wizards concentrate on the direct applications of magic–from healing to devastating fireballs. Learn this law well: magic cannot be destroyed. It can be subverted, redirected, transformed, absorbed, or dissipated, even reversed. Come, while we walk, let us work on your mage-light. You have power in abundance, good outlander, but lack only the skill and discipline in its application.”

They walked quietly for a while, skirting the mighty trunk of a kalar tree. Kevin silently named the bushes he knew. But his thoughts churned eventually to a question. “What if outlander magic is different, noble one-horn?”

“I think I should be the judge of that, don’t you?”

Kevin nodded reluctantly. The
X’gäthi called him ‘High Wizard’. So this allegedly mighty wizard, who could blast a hundred Black Wolves to smithereens and heal a dying Faun–how could he fail to hold a mage-light alight for more than an eye-blink? Why could he not heat water, start a fire, or drive away flies? Basic, basic Unicorn magic, but he always made cold water, occasionally immolated a twig, and insects kept biting him.

He asked, suddenly,
“Why, if you’re so powerful, would you not use your magic in Mistral Bog?”

“No need to sound so sullen about it,” Zephyr replied. “Because, noble Kevin, of the consequences. Mistral Bog has predators
which are attracted to magic. Equally, Fauns are magic-users and apt to detect the use of magic. Law number two.”

“No magic is done in isolation?”

“Thank the Hills, he has ears attached to a brain,” said the Unicorn, sounding vastly surprised. This time, Kevin did dare to smack him.

Zephyr held that the consequences of magic were not merely physical, but also encompassed the realm
s of good and evil. Kevin chewed this over as the Unicorn talked. He called this the Great Balance, the Balance that Elliadora had once sought to right by building her Well. A great evil had been done to the land. Her work was a great healing and a binding of the evil races; the Trolls beneath the earth, and the Goblins and Drakes were expelled from the Seventy-Seven Hills. But even her act had consequences, he said. A great good, balancing the old evil, nevertheless became a target for further evil. Again and again, evil rose up against the good. Creatures, races, wizards, and wars–an endless cycle, the story of the aeons of history, the story of the Hills.

Kevin preferred to call it human nature–well, what did one call that in Feynard, creature nature? Dryad, Unicorn, Drake, Lurk nature? A cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil made for decent fiction, in his opinion. But not for a Blight.
The Blight would have a reason he could put his newly sensitised nose to. He sniffed the air. Even a pathetic excuse for a non-wizard could tell that the Blight was more advanced here in the Old Forest–he had no need for Alliathiune to be gazing around her, hollow-eyed, unable to tear her eyes away from her dying Forest, from the limp boughs and drooping, splotched leaves, from the rot and disease patiently eating away at the heart of each tree.

T
here was evil in Feynard. Evil that held her captive. Evil that struck even beyond the graves of those Glothums Zephyr had described.

What would they find at the source, at Elliadora’s Well? Would it kill Alliathiune?

Kevin tasted blood. He realised he had bitten his lip too hard.

He turned his attention back to Zephyr, who was
prattling on about the different types of magic mastered by the different creatures of the Forest. Lurks for water and stone; Dryads for living and growing things; Drakes for offensive spells; Unicorns for healing, illusion, defence, and the scholarly arts; Dragons for shape-shifting, fire, and the higher magical arts the Unicorn refused to reveal to him.

The afternoon soon fled.

A
s evening approached, the
company came to a hill, to a bare place from which they could see both behind and before. Indomalion’s corona set the southern horizon ablaze in orange flames–sun-flares, Kevin wondered? Great tendrils of impossibly distant fire, raging above the gloaming gathering across the land, stroking the faraway horizon so distinctly that he imagined he must soon see an inferno racing through the Forest. An illusion, of course. But why did the flames burn downward?

There was so much of Feynard he had never noticed. Kevin felt as though he were waking up from a decades-long sleep.

“Garlion eats Indomalion,” said Zephyr, following the direction of Kevin’s gaze. “But we must look ahead, good outlander. “Here lies beautiful Shilliabär. Those were once the city gates, through which one would enter the city’s main avenue.”

Turning at once,
Kevin surveyed the damage. Time had wreaked its toll, reducing the walls in places to heaps of rubble and the gates to dust–all that remained of them were lumps of stone that must once have formed gatehouses. Beyond, the once-proud city was in the process of being reclaimed by the Forest, overrun with undergrowth and trees where once there must have been roads, pavements, houses, and monuments. He shifted uneasily, wondering when the Glothums would appear. How they would kill. He had seen too much killing already.

He looked at the
ir company. Seven X’gäthi were left of the original dozen, one having fallen foul of a Forest creature not even his partner two feet away had seen. Akê-Akê was bruised and bloodied all along his left side after a second, smaller Yatakê had attacked them in the early evening, but still grinned fiercely back at him. He seemed to be making the most of his second lease on life. Snatcher, battered and gouged in a dozen places but still unbowed, carried the precious burden of Alliathiune in his sling. They were utterly spent.

Kevin
felt his guilt would grow into a Yatakê and eat him alive. If he had not snapped at Alliathiune, they would not now be standing on the portico of deadly Shilliabär. He should not have been so grumpy. So angry. So out of control! For twenty-seven years, Kevin Jenkins had enjoyed absolute control over his little domain–save for Father and Brian. He had been on Feynard what, three weeks? Already a lifetime. He was a different Kevin.

When had he ever
walked on his own two legs for a whole lighttime with only a brief pause for lunch? He shivered. Father would have killed him for raising his voice, for daring to answer back. Brian would have guaranteed a visit to the doctor.

“Strength to you, good outlander,” said Zephyr, touching his horn to
Kevin’s shoulder. “This is a spell for protection this darktime. I fear to make camp out here. Something malodorous drifts on the wind.”

Kevin
nodded. Where the Yatakê had tarried, the Old Forest was rotten and dying, as though their mere touch were deadly poison to growing things. Branches softened and wilted, leaves turned brown, even the soil underfoot was spongy with decomposition. The Dryad would have been devastated, had she seen what they had seen.

Concentrated Blight. He shivered again.

“Are you cold?”

“Just a bad memory, Zephyr. Sometimes I can’t believ
e … Feynard must be strange and magical beyond belief.”

Th
e Unicorn lifted his melancholy gaze to those last roseate strains of the sunset streaming between the kalar trees. “There are other pockets of magic in the known lands of Feynard, good Kevin. Strange and wondrous lands they are, beyond Driadorn’s borders. But the Forest is the greatest of these, and Elliadora’s Well is the heart of its magic. I feel much stronger here–but this is also why the Blight is so alarming. If the basic fabric of the Forest can be corrupted, then what hope have creatures who depend on it for our livelihood? Our very survival is at stake. You are an outlander. One who comes from beyond. Who knows what effect the magic might have on you? What you might be capable of? To us, you truly represent the unknown.”

“But I’m rather different to the warrior Alliathiune saw in her dream,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “What good am I, really?”

“Hrr-ibrrali!” Zephyr harrumphed, his breath steaming slightly in the cooler evening air. Kevin had the impression that he was considering his next words very carefully, and waited patiently for the Unicorn’s response. “There are seven tests of wizardry, good Kevin,” he said obliquely. “The first of these is the test of reason. Nothing in magic is straightforward. Many are the pitfalls ready to trap the unwary, the impatient, and the ignorant. Often there is conflicting and inconclusive information, where the skill of the wizard lies not in nimble digits, but in the ability to reason through to the correct solution–the one that will not kill.”

“Among the races of Driadorn, wizards are a select breed. They hold great power and responsibility. Any creature may become a wizard, but some–Unicorns being a case in point–have certain natural advantages. Some have the power but lack the ability to harness it.” Here, he looked significantly at
Kevin. “I have seen that you are eager to learn. Only you saw the connection to Elliadora’s Well.”

“Which remains unproven.”

“As yet!” He sighed deeply. “I also sense within you a deep uneasiness about wizardry. It is this lack of belief that causes you to withhold.”

“Zephyr, for goodness sake! The truth is: I don’t have a clue!”

“Well. Seven tests there are. Once initiated there is no going back–the tests will come, whether you choose them or not. If you try to avoid them, as some would-be wizards do, the lore suggests that the tests will be commensurately harder. The first seems simple, but it is not. The apprentice must memorise the Wizard’s Creed, and then answer seven questions to a wizard of the seventh rank. The answers given will determine how far and fast through the ranks one progresses. Good Kevin, I carry with me a copy of the Wizard’s Creed. It is a sealed scroll. Once you break the seal, the tests are set in motion–your name is written on the Roll of Initiation in
Korahlia-tak-Tarna
, a secret room in a secret tower, whose location is revealed only to wizards of the third rank and beyond. A select few, in other words. I would ask, as a friend, that you give solemn and lengthy consideration to the undertaking of this journey. I ask you to consider becoming a wizard.”

“I am
honoured, of course.” He was stunned, to tell the truth. Kevin too gazed for into the distance for a time, gathering his thoughts, and scratched his chin. “May I ask a few questions, good Zephyr?”

“I’ll
answer what I may.”

“What are the other six tests?”

“That I cannot say.”

“I guessed
so. Are these tests hard?”

“It is said that they test a person to the uttermost. Failure does not necessarily spell death–at least, in the lower ranks this is largely true.”

“I see.” As the Unicorn had intended, this gave him pause. “I guess Omäirg and Ozark were seventh rank wizards, then?”

“Sixth and seventh, respectively.”

“And what rank are you?”

“Fourth.”

“Only?” The Unicorn sucked in his breath. “Er–I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Zephyr
let out a sigh, very slowly indeed, and turned away to gaze out over Shilliabär. “There are no flippant answers in the tests. You should understand, good Kevin, that the ranks are roughly equivalent to orders of magnitude. I am one of only six fourth-rank wizards in Driadorn, and in all Feynard, there are but twenty-three in total. Of the fifth rank there are three. Nine out of the last ten wizards to attempt the fifth rank have failed and perished.” His voice was tight, controlled. “Give it thought. I have seen you at work, heard you speak, and have seen the magic burst loose from you. You have what it takes. My offer is not made lightly.”

Zephyr was scared about that test,
Kevin realised–and in a roundabout way, he felt comforted. “I shall consider it. Am I wasting time reading my book, in that case?”

He glanced back and grinned. “No such study is ever wasted, good
Kevin. Are you ready to continue once I have prepared the others?”

“
I am.”

But his gaze returned to the green pod which held Alliathiune, slowly but surely destroying her
. He had much to ponder.

*  *  *  *

They moved into Shilliabär in a tight group, threading their way along what had once been a major thoroughfare, but was now a cracked, tumbled expanse covered in bushes and a dense, thorny creeper Zephyr called
allïmwort
. The evening was thick with its scent, a cloying smell like rancid saffron commingled with a touch of black pepper. All around them were the cries of unseen creatures, the clicking of claws against stone, and the occasional rasp of leathery skin disappearing into a dark crevice between the broken stonework. No hand strayed far from a weapon.

The last light of evening soon faded. They paused briefly to pass around water
, nuts, and waycrust, before igniting illumithär sticks to light their way. Zephyr was keen to press on for the city centre. But with the gathering darkness, the larger Glothum predators emerged from their holes and nests in search of ‘fun and entertainment’, as Akê-Akê put it, and after one of the X’gäthi was nearly lost to a pony-sized feline, the Unicorn settled upon discretion rather than foolhardiness. The X’gäthi found a partially intact building, inside which they took shelter. Snatcher stopped up the more obvious holes with the largest boulders he could carry–yet even so, Kevin totted up at least half-a-dozen attacks repulsed before he completed this work.

The next thing he remembered was the rough edge of Akê-Akê’s cloven hoof introducing itself
to his ribcage. “What?” He sat up sharply. “Oh, stinking piles of tripe … Zephyr? Snatcher? What’s going on?”

The whole room shook as though struck by an earthquake.

“Dark wizardry!” hissed the Faun. “Gather your belongings!”

“No time!” shouted Zephyr, rearing in panic. Silvery powder spurted from a pouch on his back. “It’s a diversion!” he neighed. “Lurk, get us out of here–
now!
”

The room
rattled again, throwing Kevin to his knees. Something was rising from the earth beneath them, he realised suddenly, for the floor shifted and cracked in jagged strips right across the room. He staggered to his feet.

“Stand back!”
roared Snatcher, crouching, coiling like a cat. Then his immense thighs snapped straight, propelling his bulk across the room in a flash. There was no time to bother with the door, which he had blockaded with an immense block of stone. Snatcher went right through the wall next to one of the windows, using his left shoulder and arm as a battering-ram. The wall exploded outwards and sagged, leaving a gaping hole which the X’gäthi darted through. The Lurk rose, flinging boulders aside with careless abandon, and reached into the room for his sling. Akê-Akê hurdled his arm; Zephyr scuttled through on his heels. Kevin found himself picked up bodily by the Lurk and swept away with the sling, just as the bottom of the room fell away and a pair of very large, purple feelers emerged from the pit. A scream like an overheated chainsaw split the darktime air.

They fled.
The Lurk tucked Kevin beneath his arm like so much baggage, hopping in great bounds over the rubble. Akê-Akê worked his way steadily through his repertoire of curses, especially when he tripped over an exposed root and gashed his chin open.

“Did anyone seize the Dryad?” cried Zephyr, sagging with relief as he saw Snatcher pull the sling over his shoulder. “Gently, mind!”

A second scream rose chillingly behind them, silencing the ordinary sounds of the city. “What was that thing?” grunted the Lurk.

“Just run!” snapped the Unicorn. “They hunt by smell.” And
Kevin could see, above his back, a cloud of dust blossom and spread gently over their trail. It smelled like poppy seeds mixed with cayenne pepper.

“Let me guess,” panted the Faun. “Scarab demon, good Unicorn?”

Zephyr stumbled in surprise, ripping his left foreleg open on a sharp rock. “How do you know that?”

“A favourite of Ozark’s in the last war.”

“Exactly!”

“Dangerous?”
Snatcher grunted.

“My fine Lurk,” gasped the Faun, “a Scarab demon would breakfast upon
Yatakê. There is only one sure way to evade them–and that is to run. Very, very fast, and very far away.”

They ran until Snatcher was winded. Being the largest of their company, he was suited more to sprinting than to distance running. He set
Kevin down and fell to his knees, coughing up thick phlegm laced with blood.

Zephyr cast him a
concerned glance before rounding upon Akê-Akê. He demanded, “Are you some manner of wizard, good Faun?”

The Faun stiffened as he rose, and answered the Unicorn’s steely glare with the full mettle of his own character; transformed in that instant, by a dignity that had until now lain completely unsuspected beneath his humble exterior. Neither flinched, and when he spoke, the Faun’s voice was as still as a forest pool. “What I am and what I am not, good Unicorn, is matter of personal privacy that I choose not to share at this time.”