The Great Tree of Avalon (39 page)

Henni thought for a moment, twisting the woven red band on his forehead. “Sounds fun.”

“No,” said Tamwyn firmly. He strode across the grass and put his hands on Henni’s shoulders. “It’s not fun. And I think you’ve started to realize that yourself, which makes you probably the only hoolah in Avalon who understands the difference between life and death! But really, Henni, hoolahs just aren’t made to fight other people’s battles, are they? You shouldn’t come.”

Henni stuck out his chin. “I wouldn’t miss it for all the balloonberries in Avalon.”

Seeing there was no use arguing, Tamwyn let go. He turned back to Brionna. “So point the way.”

“I’d rather show you myself.” With the graceful quickness of an elf, she retrieved her longbow and quiver. “That is ... if you’ll have me.”

He met her gaze, then slowly nodded. “Let’s go.”

“About time,” grumbled Nuic, who had resumed his perch on Elli’s shoulder.

Together, they marched up the hillside. Cool grass swished against Tamwyn’s ankles, but he didn’t notice. For his attention had turned again to the sky. To the shredding clouds . . . and beyond, to the Wizard’s Staff.

Only one star remained. And it was throbbing, pulsing like a painful wound.

38
•
Death on Wings

Deep in the shadows of his stone tower on the canyon rim, the cloaked sorcerer seemed just a black blot within the darkness. Only his hands, pale and smooth, caught enough light to be seen. They were stroking something with care, almost affection: a gnarled wooden staff.

The sorcerer’s thin fingers slid down the length of the staff, brushing over every grain and whorl of wood. Neither the shaft nor the knotted top showed any sign at all of magic, or anything special, but the sorcerer released a thin, hissing laugh. “You cannot hide your powers from me, staff of Merlin! I can feel them, mmmyesss, even now.”

He squeezed the shaft as a man would squeeze his enemy’s throat. “And regrettable though it is to destroy such a powerful tool of magic, I shall destroy you. Mmmyesss! After I use you for one simple task.”

He tilted his cloaked head upward, scanning the air. The bloodred talons and beaks of more than twenty ghoulacas, circling above, flashed in the starlight. Death on wings, they were. Their nearly transparent forms smeared the sky as they passed overhead, while their angry screeches echoed across the canyon, the dam, and the huge white lake.

A sharp wind gusted, wailing even louder than the birds. The sorcerer clutched at the neck of his cloak to keep his head covered. “Cursed wind,” he spat. “I will be your master soon enough!”

He continued to peer skyward, past the ghoulacas and the swirls of red dust whipped up by the wind, to the stars beyond. Only one star remained in the constellation he knew so well—and it was already flickering weakly. Beneath his hood, he smiled in anticipation.

“My lord Rhita Gawr has done his work well on high, mmmyesss. As I have done well below! Soon, very soon, the entire world of Avalon, root and branch, shall be ours.”

Harlech’s wide bulk climbed out of the quarry pit below the tower. He stepped over to the sorcerer, his heavy boots stained with blood, his weapons clanking against each other with every stride. Just at the edge of the shadows under the tower, he stopped.

“Everthin’s ready, Master, jest as ye wanted.”

“The dam?”

“Aye, Master. Jest one more line o’ stones to set.” He nodded at the top of the dam, where several rows of chained horses, wolves, oxen, deer, and dwarves labored to haul enormous blocks of stone into place. Their eyes looked vacant, their faces gaunt. Whether they stood on two legs or four—or, in the case of one chestnut mare with a badly swollen foreleg, three—they bent their weary backs to the slave masters’ cracking whips. “They’re near done.”

The voice in the shadows growled, “Then we are
not
really ready yet, are we, my Harlech?”

Nervously, the warrior rubbed the long scar on his jaw. “N-no, Master.”

“And my boat?”

“That’s ready, aye.” He pointed at the shore of the lake near the spot where the dam met this side of the canyon. “Checked it over meself.”

“Its color?”

“Pure lily white, Master. Just like ye said.”

There was a rustle, and the hooded sorcerer stepped out of the shadows. “A white vessel,” he rasped, grinding the tip of the staff into the red rocks underfoot. “Mmmyesss, just as Merlin himself once used. Very good, my Harlech, very good.”

The slab of a face relaxed slightly, and he asked, “So what’s yer plan fer the slaves? After the dam’s all finished, I mean.”

In the darkness of the hood, a pair of eyes flashed menacingly. “Need I tell you everything? Kill them. All of them— from the biggest horse to the smallest light flyer.”

Harlech’s head bobbed eagerly. “Aye, Master.”

The sorcerer turned and started to walk down to the road that led to the lake, then paused. “While you’re at it, do something especially painful to that old elf. He annoys me, Harlech, with all that moaning and constant bleeding of his. I kept him alive in case I needed him to make his granddaughter obey, but he is no more use to me now.”

A new gust of wind whirled across the rim, carrying dirt from the quarries and splinters of branches and bark from the clear-cut trees across the canyon. But this time the sorcerer didn’t seem to notice. Grasping the staff in one pale hand, he lifted the other toward the flickering star overhead, and uttered a single word.

“Now.”

With that, he strode confidently toward the lake and the white boat that awaited him.

•  •  •

On the canyon’s other rim, near the far end of the dam, an odd assortment of spies peered out from a jumble of unused logs. But for the sturdy fingers grasping branches, the brown curls fluttering in the wind, and the shining eyes in the shadows, the companions couldn’t be seen, even by the circling ghoulacas. For Tamwyn, Elli, Nuic, Henni, and Brionna held themselves as still as the stones of the dam itself.

Tamwyn crouched as close as possible to the dirt ramp that led to the top of the dam, hidden by a spray of branches and needles on a burly pine that had lived more than four hundred years before being felled. His dark eyes watched the slaves trying to move stones and scaffolding across the dam, while burly men lashed their whips. From Tamwyn’s tunic pocket, Batty Lad also watched, his upright ears pink with rage.

“Terrible,” muttered Elli, who was kneeling beneath the shattered roots of a hemlock. She scanned the array of crude saws, axes, and other tools that lay scattered on the ground by the ramp—as well as the body of a dead foal, its back sliced by whips, next to the canyon rim. “And those poor creatures! None of them deserved this.”

“And none of them are human,” added Nuic from his perch on her shoulder. His colors were all reds and browns, like the dried blood on the horse’s back. “Have you noticed? The only humans here are holding whips.”

“But why?” Elli scraped the last flake of bark off a branch and threw it at the ground.

“Hmmmpff. You of all people should know.” Nuic paced up her shoulder so that his round form touched her ear. “Creatures almost never enslave their own kind. And even when they do, they pretend the slaves are different somehow. And inferior—so they can be forced to work.”

“And some slave masters,” said Brionna bitterly from behind an elm trunk, “just like to be cruel.” She looked all across the dam for any sign of her grandfather, without success.

Henni, beside her, merely shook his head. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t approve, but that he just didn’t understand how one people could enslave another. Where was the fun in that?

Keeping to the shadows of the logs, Tamwyn crept over to the others. “All right,” he whispered. “Here’s the plan.” He glanced uncertainly at Elli. “It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.”

He cleared his throat. “Three things we’ve got to do: free those slaves, stop the sorcerer from making his crystal, and get back the staff.”

“And one more thing.” Brionna fingered her bowstring. “I’ve got to find him.”

Elli, kneeling beside the elf, touched her shoulder. “I’ll be there to help you.” She tapped the water gourd on her hip. “With this.”

Grim as Brionna’s face was, it softened ever so slightly. As she returned Elli’s gaze, there was a touch of hope in her eyes.

“So here’s the plan,” continued Tamwyn. “You two wait for my, uh, distraction . . . then make a dash onto the dam. Free as many slaves as you can. We’ll create some confusion to help you. But watch those men with the whips. They’ll probably have other weapons, too.”

“No,” corrected Brionna. “There are twelve men in all. But except for a few who carry daggers, all they have are whips. The sorcerer doesn’t want them too powerful, I think.” Deep furrows filled her brow. “Only Harlech carries weapons.”

“Harlech?”

“The sorcerer’s second in command. Big as an oak stump, he is, and . . .” Her voice trailed off momentarily. “Very brutal.”

Tamwyn nodded grimly. “How many arrows do you have left?”

Brionna didn’t even check her quiver. “Enough.”

“Say now, what about me?” Henni thumped his small chest expectantly.

Tamwyn pointed to the far side of the lake. “You see that boat down there, just below the dam? That’s for White Hands, I’m sure of it. The Lady of the Lake said that Merlin took a white boat out to deep water to draw élano to the staff. So your job, Henni, is to sink that boat.”

A wide grin spread across his face. “Now
that
sounds like fun.”

“Have your slingshot ready just in case.”

Henni chuckled. “But of course, clumsy man.”

Elli nudged Tamwyn’s shoulder. “What’s this distraction of yours?”

He sighed. “Well, my first thought was to make a trick fire—like the one I did with those wood shavings back in Stoneroot.”

“Right,” she replied with a wicked glint in her eye. “The time I almost killed you.”

Tamwyn shook his head of long black hair. “
One
of the times, you mean.” Then the humor vanished from his face. “But that only worked because it was small. When I tried it later on, when those ghoulacas attacked us in the forest, I couldn’t keep it going.”

“You’ve learned some things since then,” offered Elli.

He shook his head. “Not enough. It takes a real wizard to do that kind of trick right.”

“You mean that kind of illusion,” snarled Nuic, now an irritated shade of yellowish green. “Until you realize that illusions are just as real as you are, Tamwyn, they’ll always be just infantile tricks.”

“Say what you like,” he retorted, “but I can’t count on that to work. No, the best distraction I can do is to run along the canyon rim screaming and shouting. That’ll bring the ghoulacas away from the dam.”

“And right onto your head!” Elli grimaced. “That’s just plain suicide.”

Henni stroked his chin. “Could be exciting for a while, though.”

“A very short while!” Elli was adamant. “You’ve got to think of something else.”

From Tamwyn’s pocket, a small voice chattered, “Pleeease, manny man, woojaja think up somethings else?”

He shrugged. “
What
else? We’re running out of time, and . . . I don’t have a better idea.”

“Wait,” demanded Elli, shoving some curls off her forehead. “Maybe you could speak to those birds! Scare them off! The way you did the dragon, remember?”

He scrunched his nose in doubt. “That was just one creature, not twenty! And besides, I already knew the dragon’s language. This idea—”

“Just might work.” Elli squeezed his arm. “And keep you alive, too.”

The sprite on her shoulder grunted. “For another minute or two, anyway.”

Tamwyn peered up at the savage birds, listening closely to their shrieks. “Well . . . it might work.”

She gave a vigorous nod. “Try it, then. And then after you’ve sent them away, you can go after the staff.”

“One thing at a time, all right?” he said gruffly, pushing her hand away.

But the truth was, he had already been thinking about the staff.
She’s right, I should go after it. Who else can possibly take it back?
But how could he tell her that he was more afraid of the staff than the sorcerer? Afraid of what might happen if he even touched it?

“Look,” said Brionna, pointing to the opposite rim. A gray-cloaked figure with a staff was walking briskly down to the water’s edge. “The sorcerer. He’s going to the boat!”

Tamwyn pushed his doubts aside, looked skyward, and tried to concentrate. On bloodred talons and dagger-sharp beaks. On transparent wings riding the wind. On inbred anger. Hatred. The overwhelming urge to kill.

He watched the blurred streaks of the ghoulacas, concentrating all his thoughts on them.
Fly away!
he called urgently.
Fly away. Stay here and you will die!

A new burst of shrieks suddenly rent the air. The ghoulacas flew faster, talons slashing the air. They seemed confused, or even frightened. But they were not leaving the dam!

Tamwyn glanced across the canyon. The sorcerer had stopped abruptly. He was scanning the sky, sensing something.

Fly away
, urged Tamwyn.
To the nearest portal. It’s your only chance to escape!

More confusion. The birds shrieked wildly.

Go! Go now. Before you all die!

Suddenly several ghoulacas broke away and streaked toward the forest of Woodroot. Their screeches, carried by the wind, echoed across the white lake and the swath of clearcut trees. Now more wheeled in flight. More deadly beaks and talons followed. Soon the sky above the dam was almost free of them.

“It’s working!” cried Elli, almost jumping out of her hiding place among the logs.

“Hmmmpff,” muttered Nuic. “Beginner’s luck.”

Tamwyn shot him a wink. “Just a trick, that’s all.” He tugged on the sleeve of Elli’s Drumadian robe. “This is our chance. Let’s go!”

Together, they stood and started running up the dirt ramp to the top of the dam. A stallion, chained in the lead of one group of slaves, saw them coming. The great horse whinnied, reared up on his hind legs, and kicked furiously, ripping the chain apart. Wolves, dogs, donkeys, deer, and a tethered falcon nearby halted their work, trying to learn what was happening. More of them saw the rescuers and raised their voices in howls, brays, screeches, and roars.