Saint Elm's Deep (The Legend of Vanx Malic) (18 page)

While she conversed around the stump fire, Chelda took a black bead from her pack and made a true sorethatch for Vanx out of Rammaton Tytak’s hair.

A haunch of venison had been dug up out of a nearby snow bank and was now roasting on the fire. The air was thick with its rich aroma, and one of the gargans even found a meaty bone for Poops to gnaw.

No one really understood what was being said, save for when Chelda was telling of the saber shrew they’d hunted and killed, and displaying its fangs. Then Chelda and the men of the ramma rabble went on to more serious subjects. The body language of the gargans, when they spoke, became very animated, and it was plain that they were speaking of something that irritated them deeply. Once the meat was done cooking and healthy pieces were speared on daggers all around, Chelda told Vanx and the others what she’d learned.

“None of these men have actually seen the beast, but they’ve seen its scat and its tracks. It destroyed a small fisher-folk village at Three Tower Lake. Some of the people fled out onto the thin ice toward the island at the lake’s center. The thing followed but fell through before it got to them. They all thought it drowned, but it later surprised a party out hunting elk near Kovz Valley.” Chelda made a reverent gesture with her hand to her heart. “It killed two of those seven and disappeared back into the forest, as if it were made of mist.”

“What sort of beast is it?” Vanx asked.

“Should it concern us?” asked Brody after him.

“They…” She gestured toward the gargan men. “They heard it was a white-scaled beast shaped something like a haulkat from one group of people, and that it was a sleek, white-furred wolf from another. Still others have said it was some sort of lizard. They call it the Shangelak, which is an old word for changeling.” Her eyes met Gallarael’s and held them for a moment. “Shapeshifters have found their way into the stories of my people forever. Changelings are thought to be demonic and evil. My people will hunt down and kill any changeling they can.”

“Do we have to pass these places?” Brody asked. “The places it attacked?”

“Not directly. My home village, Great Vale, is beyond Three Tower Lake, but we can go the other way around it. There are hunting parties made up of young, glory-seeking gargans out after the thing, so we have to watch out for them and the Shangelak both.”

“Do we have to go to Great Vale?” Xavian ventured.

Chelda looked at the mage then at Vanx. Finally, she shrugged. “No. But I hoped to. We can hear the old tales of the Hoar Witch and the Arbor priest from one of the eldritch there, though, and buy the mounts we seek from the shepherds who frequent the hot springs nearby.” Chelda shrugged again, but Vanx knew her indifference was forced. “All of it is on the way to Rimehold.”

“Great Vale it is, then.” Vanx nodded to Brody and clapped a reassuring hand on Xavian’s back.

With still plenty of time to travel left in the day, Rammaton Tytak bade them farewell and gave a deep head bow to Vanx.

Vanx, Poops and their companions followed Chelda deeper into the steeply graded forest. The rammaton led his men farther south along the gargan border.

By that evening, Vanx’s bruised thigh was aching, and he was as relieved as ever when Chelda stopped and indicated a shallow cave where they could set up camp.

Xavian had noticed Vanx’s limp and performed a minor healing of the sore muscles. Vanx was glad for it. He could heal others, if the wound wasn’t too bad, but he’d never mastered the tricky art of healing himself. The few times he’d tried, he only managed to waste his energy.

They posted two-person watches now that there was a specific danger to worry about, but throughout the night only a loud outburst from Poops, when a small creature ventured too close to the camp, disturbed their otherwise peaceful rest.

The terrain grew considerably steeper throughout the next day, and a light but steady flurry of snow began to fall. Sharp and uncaring fists of hard gray stone jutted up through the snow, and the trees were less dense here. It was so steep at times that Vanx had to crane his neck to see what lay ahead of them. They ended up camping in a deep crack at the base of one such outcropping of rock that night.

Poops killed and dragged out a heavy brown spider, half his own size, from back in the depths of the fracture, which kept the others in its opening for the duration of the night. No one slept well, save for Xavian, who was too tired to be afraid of a huge, creeping arachnid.

The next afternoon brought them to the crest of a high ridge with a view that was breathtaking. Below them lay a vast, bowl-shaped valley that was floored with a perfectly flat expanse of what would’ve appeared to be tundra, had the lake’s water been frozen all the way across.

Where the water was frozen, it was covered with an unblemished blanket of snow. Where it wasn’t, the smooth surface reflected the blustery blue-gray sky as if the lake were the very looking glass of the gods and goddesses above.

The surface was so still and smooth that, if the snowflakes weren’t still floating down before his eyes, Vanx would have felt as if he were in a painting.

Snow-laden pine trees climbed sharply up and away from the frozen shore, and a gauzy mist hung over the water. Sitting off of the inner edge of the ice rim was a small island. Rising up from the island, like the gloved fingers on a maimed hand, were three ancient towers. One of them had crumbled, making it look as if that finger were bent at the first knuckle. Of the remaining two, only one looked whole and stood straight. The other had a healthy lean to it, and the top fourth of it had crumbled away. Even at the great distance from which they were seeing them, it was clear they were old and abandoned.

“Three Tower Lake,” Chelda stated the obvious. Then she went on to say that the crumbly towers had been there long before her people had settled the mountains.

A thin trail of wood smoke could be seen at the northern edge of the ice shelf where it met the trees. There were several huts that had been burned or otherwise destroyed, but there were a few people moving about. Without a second glance, Chelda turned them southward and led them around the lake in the opposite direction.

Chapter Nineteen

Remember those days of old,
when nothing could go wrong?
Now the days are young again.
Where has my lifetime gone.
-- A Zythian bard’s song

Aserica Rime’s worried, yet gleeful, cackling suddenly hiccuped into a choking cough when she sensed her own kind among those she was spying on. She backed quickly away from the seeing pool, and the link between her and her mutated griffin child, Sloffon, snapped with an audible, and slightly painful, “pop!”

Who could it be? And why were they traveling with the barbarian woman? Furthermore, why was she in possession of a Trigon artifact? Where had she gotten such a thing?

It was alarming, but in a curious sort of way. What wasn’t so curious was the Trigon medallion. She’d felt its presence the very instant the gargan woman had put it on her wrist. After that, she’d had her beast ferret out its location, so she could track them from afar. Only, this night, she felt something else among the group: one of her kind, and that was just plain frightening.

“Well, Clytun, at least it’s not those Trigon bastards coming to finish our little war.” She spoke more to herself than to the hulking minotaur who stood vigilant guard near the heavy witchwood door of her lookout.

The dingy, underground room was torchlit and filled with tables strewn with all manner of crystal balls, looking glasses, and other ancient far-seeing devices. The chamber was dominated, though, by a circular pool formed with a knee-high stone retaining wall.

Witch blood, true witch blood, was the rarest of things. A witch might birth a hundred different offspring, each with its own shape and form, but only one in that hundred had even a chance to be born with the witch blood. And here one was --a mannish warlock even-- the sort of bastard that comes along only once or twice a millennia. What was so confusing was that this would-be warlock seemed unaware of what he had the potential to become. He was also of her bloodline. This is what she had sensed in him that startled her so badly, for she knew the only child of hers to be born in a mannish form had sacrificed himself to Nepton’s wrath half a century ago.

She hobbled over to a mirror and stood before it. Her hair was a gnarled tangle of gray and yellow-white, her face a sad, wrinkled covering hanging loosely over an almost five-hundred-year-old skull filled with knowledge. Her eyes were tiny black orbs, and her teeth brown and as crooked as her nose.

Normally, she might have taken the time to study her distasteful reflection. Sometimes her ugliness fueled her determination. Seeing herself filled her with hate and jealous rage, but not this day. This day she was too curiously alarmed to need the extra motivation.

Her reflection shimmered and shifted until it was gone completely, leaving a deep, rolling view of a stormy sea in the glass. In fantastic fashion, the swells and windblown foam all sped in motion to an impossible rate, but they were moving backward. The foam streams blew into the wave tops, and the white caps rolled and faded into the cobalt mass.

Suddenly, a timber broke the surface. A heartbeat later, half a ship was jutting out of the sea. Beyond it, yellow lightning crackled in strobe-like fashion. Dark, swirling clouds churned and roiled with unnatural speed. The wrath of Nepton was great that night, and seeing it again made Aserica Rime shudder at his godly power.

A dark-haired man stood tall at the bow spirit, a finely carved giant’s head. Beneath the man, the word
Foamfollower
was carved in darkly scripted letters. Boats came bobbing up to the deck. They were hauled up to the racks and secured. Men crawled over the sides or shot up head first out of the water until the ship was finally righted.

Why had it gone down? What
—

Pulling away from the vessel, just above the roaring waves, was a sleek, spade-shaped sea ray.

It was a giant storm devil. A spater-ray, she reckoned from her lore. It was attracted to the lightning and had leapt, crashing into the
Foamfollower
’s hull. As the ship traveled the sea backward, eating its own wake, Aserica Rime wondered what one of her sons had done to earn such a pointless ending.

The ship leaned as it tacked up and over more slowly rolling swells through much more favorable weather. The sun rose and fell, and then rose and fell again. Other smaller storms came and went. She was prepared to watch all of her child’s life as it peeled away from his death in her reflecting glass, but she didn’t need to watch long, for the ship had found a port--Flotsam, she thought--on the Isle of Zyth. A golden-haired Zythian woman backed swiftly down the docks to the ship. She turned and waved and pushed a painful-looking tear into her eye. The ship moved to the dock then. Captain Saint Elm skipped backward up a plank and almost fell into the woman’s embrace.

With a wave of her hand, Aserica Rime slowed, and then stopped, the image in the mirror.

She studied the Zythian girl—no, she was a woman. She had to remind herself of the long lives with which the gods had cursed all of the races of Zwar.

Her finger traced the woman’s belly, and it all became clear. She shuddered again, for the odds of birthing a blooded warlock through a generation gap were astronomical at best. But the odds of that child being half-Zythian were impossible. Only divine intervention could have managed to keep such a conflicted and powerful child alive. Such intervention meant that this trained Zythian warlock had a destiny, and most likely unimaginable power.

He was coming for her. He would try to steal her knowledge, take her life, and then assume her place.

It wouldn’t do. It just wouldn’t do.

“Calm yourself,” the minotaur said. “You are trembling and aglow with your emotion.”

She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes, letting the frozen image on her mirror start forward again. She turned away before her slowly forming reflection could remind her of her rotted body, but not before recognizing the glimmer of fear in her dark eyes.

“Go fetch me a sacrifice, Clytun,” she ordered. “Bring her to the Altar of Pain. I must seek our master in this. Divine hands have played a part in this thing’s survival. And I have a feeling that our stygian lord will relish thwarting them.”