Hawk's Nest (Tremble Island) (9 page)

Hawk had taken to the air the moment the Witch told him she had no idea of the whereabouts of Flora. Her offer to make sacrifice to the Goddess was not in his area of knowledge, so he nodded his head and left. He first began to circle the village, flying low enough to spy the nooks and crannies of the forest. With each pass, he widened the circle. He came back to the Hall as morning was breaking over the clouds of night. He sent out half of his soldiers to search for her on foot, and five more to search from the air. She must be in the area, there was only so much ground a human could cover in a given time. He grabbed a loaf of bread and a skin of water on his way to the Eyre. He needed to try to rest for at least a few hours and take to the air again. Again he wished Con was here to help with the search.

He woke to see Con fly through the open window. The huge bird became the huge man almost as soon as his talons touched the stone floor. He told his friend of the disappearance of their mate.

“One moment she was laughing and said she was going to retrieve her possessions from the hovel she shared with Fern. The next, she has disappeared into thin air. Even the wolves could not find her scent. There is magic being used to mask their way...I have ordered the Queenly Witch downstairs to find her. That is yet another story you have no knowledge of.” He began to tell Con of the happenings at the lake while his best friend stared at him puzzlement.

Con listened and thought of all he had missed in so few hours. Would it have mattered if he had been here, and his presence could have deterred her abduction? “Have you questioned the villagers and searched the woods?” At the scowl from Hawk, he shrugged his shoulders. “You seem to have packed enough happenings into the few hours I was escorting Drago and his new clan to his Hall. I mean no insult.” By the time they went down the stairs, Lady Fern was presiding over a coven of twelve Witches. She held a crudely drawn map over a burning firebowl as they chanted and threw small bunches of herbs and thing unidentifiable into the bowl.

When she noticed the men standing, watching, she beckoned them to come closer and took a small eating knife from the table. Holding first Hawk’s arm over the bowl and slicing a deep cut on his wrist, then doing the same to Con, she gave her message of love lost and love found. She held the map over the bowl again, and everyone watched as the fire caught on the paper but only turned the paper brown. There was a green x to the west of the river. She then kissed the paper and gave it to Hawk. “You will find her at that spot. I will go as far as the Wizard’s keep. He and I have unfinished business that is eons past due. I will tell you she is safe at this time, but in danger in the hours to come.”

As they headed for the door, it opened to reveal a tall thin man with wide shoulders and hair to his waist. He appeared to be middle aged, but the scowl on his face and worry in his eyes could date him as older than his years. He strode into the room and stopped in front of Hawk. “I am the Wizard Zurcho, and I have come to take my assistant, Lark, back to the keep. You will release him into my custody, or face my wrath.”

When the third morning had come and gone, and Lark had not returned, Zurcho made up his mind to go fetch him. Luckily for him, he could still transform into his favorite body of a large blackbird. Flying had its advantages, and it certainly saved time. There had been no sign of his loved one on any of the trails he might have taken and he was worried. When he reached Hawk’s Nest, the noise of the village was almost deafening. He normally led a very quiet existence. How could a man concentrate when there was all that racket going on around him? He ignored the odd looks and whispers as he strode through the place. He was here to collect Lark, and they would leave. That was his plan. Showing a brave face to the Lord of the Hall was not hard, if he had to back up his reputation he would be in trouble, and he knew it. He could fight, his father had insisted on his learning the skills of a warrior, but magic was his forte. Since his magic was unpredictable to say the least, he didn’t dare try to use it unless there was dire need.

The sight of two men and the most beautiful woman he had ever seen greeted him as he stepped through the doors of the Hall. Lord Hawk stepped in front of him and introduced himself, then introduced his companions, a Lord Con, and Lady Fern. He had never heard of either of them, but the lady’s name rang a bell in his mind. He had heard it somewhere before.

Hawk was impatient with the arrogance the man displayed and asked him with a sarcastic tone, “I apologize, but I am not familiar with the proper term to address a Wizard such as yourself, do I call you Sir Zurcho? Sir Wizard? Please enlighten me on the subject.” Hawk was trying to keep a straight face. The Wizard appeared to be a walking skeleton with no meat on his bones to speak of. The man was wide of shoulder and slender at the hip, but thin as a slice of meat.

Fern began to laugh in a tone that grated on Hawk’s ears. Just because the man kept looking at her as if he knew her was no reason for her to laugh in that derisive manner. She might be a very powerful Witch, but he found her arrogance and self-assurance annoying.

Zurcho stiffened when the beautiful woman laughed. It was not a happy laugh, it was more a laugh making fun of him. “I am of course happy to be the object of your hilarity, ma’am.” He was disappointed that the character did not match the beautiful shell, but he had more pressing matters to deal with. He turned his back on her to fully face Hawk, and the overlarge man at his side.

“You may address me as Zurcho, or Lord Zurcho if we are to remain formal. As I said, give me Lark and I will leave you with information that will give you an advantage in the war coming to your boundaries. If you refuse, you face my wrath. I sent him here on a simple mission to borrow an asset of yours, there was no need to detain him. He was not sent to cause problems, if he has I will discipline him.”

Hawk was scowling at Fern. The moment the Wizard turned his back on her, the Witch began to look scary, her hair was slowly rising and the color of her eyes were bleaching from the intense sparkling green into a swirling mass of pearlescent white. He ignored the Wizard as the man listened to Con, explaining that they had not seen the man’s emissary.

Hawk pulled the woman’s arm back down as she was raising it toward the painfully thin man. He knew she planned something nasty and was tired of her actions, especially toward a guest in his Hall. He pulled her into the Hallway behind the great room and shook her by her arms. “You are behaving like a spoiled child. From the moment you resurrected yourself, you have tossed your importance around like a child throws his toys. You are supposed to be a great and powerful Witch, the greatest to ever have served this Hall, and yet you act like a woman raised by natured wolves. What is the problem? What has the Wizard Zurcho done to cause you to treat a visitor to this Hall, my Hall, in such a manner?” He shook her again when she remained stubbornly silent. “If you wish to play your game then do it elsewhere, I have never banished a woman from this place before and I am not happy about the thought of doing it now. You will tell me what this vindictiveness is caused from, or you will leave this Hall and these lands and never return. I am the Overlord here, my word is law. My mate is missing, and it seems the Wizard’s assistant is missing also, and I do not have time to soothe your childish whims. Speak, woman.”

After all of the long, long years, he had no idea who she was. Her heart fluttered when he walked through the door, yet he acted as though they had never met. His hammer was the one that had sent her to the bottom of the lake, and her lightning had set him on fire, burning his body into a twitching screaming corpse. He had the same face that haunted her dreams. Handsome, his large brown eyes still had that arrested look when he glanced her way. Just as they had that fateful day, the day she died defending this Hall. His skeletal frame was different, but his arrogance was still worn as a cloak, just as his hair hanging down his back cloaked him from behind. She had dreamed of the day they would meet again. The day that they would do the right thing, no fighting to gain land or glory, no fighting to defend what one had. Lord Hawk shook her again and threatened to banish her? This was too much, if he wanted the story, he would get it, but she would tell it once only. “Take me to Zurcho, and find some quiet corner. I will tell the tale.” She locked their gazes, “If one laughs at my tale, I will destroy the lot of you.”

The last thing Con wanted to hear was an ancient story of lost love and souls calling to each other. His guts were killing him as it was over his inability to understand why they hadn’t been able to find Flora. He resented Hawk’s assurances that he had flown every inch of the boundary lines, and still had his soldiers and shifters on the ground searching for her. Obviously someone missed the path she had taken. If, as he had been told, they discovered her missing within minutes of her disappearance, how could they have missed her? He did not want to be here, listening to this love story, he wanted to be in the sky, searching for, and finding his own lost love.

“The fighting was intense, we were losing ground to the enemy, and I needed to draw energy from the Echo’s deep rivers, or open water. My gaze locked with a man from the enemy’s side, it was as if we became one, deep in my being. Amidst the chaos and people distracting us, we lost one another. I could not stay behind the walls and allow so many people to be slaughtered without trying one last effort to gather energy enough to repel the enemy. I made my way to the lake and had gone into the water. Echo’s energy responds to an Echo Witch and her moods. Fear brings on protection, desperate need is often considered fear, and so Echo’s energies called to the skies that night. I saw the lightning before I came to the surface. Rocks of frozen water pelted the enemy on the bank of the lake where they waited for me to show myself. I turned and saw the man from earlier that night as his arm extended, losing a hammer that connected with my head and face. My last sight of him was a burning mass of ashes where he had stood, before I sank to the bottom of the lake.” She turned her head and blinked back tears, before continuing with her story. The way Zurcho was staring at her was beginning to unnerve her with the feeling that he had just discovered something he had been searching for.

“The years of slumber have not always been peaceful. Yet two years ago, I was wakened by a cry for help. The need and hurt in his voice pulled my soul from its slumber so thoroughly that I tried to lure the one calling to me, with no success. Finally, when Fern fell into the lake, breathing her last as her body sank deep, I had my chance to follow that voice. Lord Hawk, in his gallantry, rushed to save his soldier. I could do nothing to stop the soul from becoming split, and Fern became a helpless shell, with too much knowledge and not the ability to stop her body from dying along with the half of her soul that lay with my other half in the lake bottom. Fortune again smiled on me when the walking vacant shell came to the village. She was perfect for our needs, Fern’s and mine. By this time, the calls for help were beginning to grow more distant as if the one calling had given up and had decided to simply fade away.” She gave Zurcho’s bony frame a look, and turned to Hawk. “Imagine my surprise when the voice that has been calling to me, begging for me to help him, to come to him all this time, was right in front of me. And he did not recognize me, the one his soul had been calling to. My journey has been long and to know that it was for nothing… I have no more words, I will be in my room.”

She left three stunned men sitting at the table looking at each other, two of which wondered what the third would do. Zurcho pushed his chair back and stood up to pace the room. “You are looking for Lord Pladrin of Klonslow Hall. He has come to me many times in this past year in an effort to gain my help to expand his empire. When he could not gain my cooperation with words, he began to take my staff as hostages to get me to comply. I finally sent all of the servants and people under my domain away to save them from his evil ways. My powers.” He choked on his words, it was difficult for the arrogant man to admit to his failings, yet after what the woman had just admitted to, how could he not be as brave as she? “He brought a young widow to me weeks ago to help her regain the natural ability to feel her body’s needs. It seemed such an innocent request at the time that I used my potion to help her. I did not know they would hold a knife to my assistant’s throat to compel me into having her entrap Lord Hawk. How Pladrin knew that my powers have been fading over the past two years or more, I have no idea. I tried to rearrange the bone fence and I believe you were the recipient of that spell.” His audience of two burst out laughing, and he smiled. “You may laugh, Lark almost had a heart attack, and I expected your army at the gates.” He shook himself, remembering these men had a mate that was most likely in the hands of one of the most vicious creatures on the island. “Pladrin is a cruel and harsh man. His second nature is a huge ape being that is more bloodthirsty than his human half.

“He terrorizes his villagers and his minions are as bad as he is. The entire Hall is corrupt and if my powers had not begun to leave me, I would have tried to level the place myself. One small boy came to my attention when he had run away from the place. His mother and father had refused to turn their young daughter over to the minions for their amusement, so they were burned alive in their hut. The boy almost died from fear that they would know he was not at home when the fire happened. They are not discriminating about who they torture. If it can scream, it is fair game. Now, I have a Witch to soothe, and hopefully I can do so in a manner to her satisfaction. You men will have to watch your backs, Pladrin is a sneaky bastard with no compunction or scruples. If he knows the Witch is your mate, he will use her to wrest this Hall from you and anything else you may hold dear.”