The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5) (31 page)

“We should close the door and hide here,” suggested Dacien as a crescendo of howls rose up on the slope below the cliff.

“We still risk discovery if that is a Goblin pack,” replied Elerian worriedly. “Once their masters discover this cave, it will be only a matter of time before they ferret out the hidden door. I think it would be best if I led them off while the rest of you wait for me here.”

A chorus of objections rose up, but Elerian paid them no heed. After shedding all his gear and his mail shirt, he thrust his two knives into his boot tops.

“Keep everyone here,” he said briefly to Ascilius. “And do not worry. Once I have led them away, I will return through the treetops where they cannot follow me.” Before Ascilius could object, Elerian stepped through the doorway, closing it behind him. He was startled to find Anthea, her mage light extinguished, waiting for him in the passageway, for he had not seen her slip through the doorway. Like him, she wore only a leather shirt and brown leather pants and boots.

“You cannot go with me, Anthea,” objected Elerian at once. For an answer, she lithely bent and seized the knife in his left boot. Slipping it into her right boot top, she stood and looked at him defiantly.

“Odd I never noticed how tall she is,” mused Elerian to himself, noticing for the first time that her eyes were almost on a level with his own. Another chorus of howls brought him back to reality, warning him not to delay any longer. “I can conceal her in the canopy if things go badly,” he consoled himself as he ran through the cave entrance, Anthea following at his heels like a shadow. Although the sky was still overcast, the rain had stopped, allowing Elerian to clearly distinguish the dark shape bounding through the trees on the far side of the clearing before him, its eyes gleaming like yellow lamps in the darkness.

“A Goblin hound,” he thought to himself as he spun around to his left and raced across the clearing, Anthea easily matching his long strides. “I wonder how the creature and its pack mates managed to follow our trail through the rain?” he wondered to himself as he paused for a moment at the verge of the clearing, waiting for the hound and its companions to emerge into the open, for it was important that all of them see and follow him if his plan was to succeed.

Seconds later, four enormous wolf like creatures bounded eagerly into the open. Elerian was dismayed to see that they were licantropes, kin to the monster he had slain in Anthea's cell and not hounds as he had first thought. Opening his third eye, he saw that their shades were an intense shade of crimson, a sign of their enormous strength and vitality. When an eager whine from the leader of the pack signaled to Elerian that he and Anthea had been seen, he sprang into the forest. As he raced through the dark wood covering the slope below him, his sidelong glances to his left reassured him that Anthea was following him easily. Behind them a chorus of howls rose up from the licantropes as they anticipated a fresh kill and warm blood to lap. When his sharp ears told him that the creatures had entered the forest behind him, Elerian expected the changelings to slow, but despite the rain and the wet ground, they continued to follow him and Anthea as if drawn after them on the end of a string.

“They have an unnaturally acute sense of smell, but I have a trick that will defeat them,” thought Elerian to himself as he and Anthea raced down the mountainside through a wet, gray and black world, their night sight easily penetrating the darkness around them. When they reached the flatlands below, Elerian turned toward the east, guided by his innate sense of direction. The footing was less treacherous here on level ground, and he and Anthea soon opened a small lead on their pursuers.

His feet light and his body responding instantly to every demand made upon it, Elerian now found himself enjoying the race through the forest in spite of the dangerous creatures that pursued him and Anthea. Overcome by the same feelings, Anthea suddenly sped past him so that she now ran in front of him, setting a pace that was even faster than before, as if she was determined to test the limits of her speed and endurance. Like a lodestone, Elerian’s gaze was drawn to her speeding form, dwelling on her long legs and trim flanks as her lithe muscles flexed and swelled beneath the soft, supple leather covering them. As if she sensed his gaze, Anthea briefly looked back over her left shoulder, her dark eyes filled with excitement engendered by the chase blended with contentment with the attraction she held for him. As the miles and the hours flew by, however, even the wonderful, half Elven bodies of Elerian and Anthea began to tire, and the relentless pack behind them began to draw closer.

“If they sight us, we will never lose them,” thought Elerian to himself. Judging that the time had come to lose their pursuers, he called out to Anthea.

“Take to the trees! It is time to lose these creatures.” At once Anthea leaped high onto the trunk of a great chestnut that appeared on her right. Elerian followed with his own lithe spring. Drawing themselves onto a thick limb twenty feet off the ground, the two of them sped off to the south, running in single file across broad, twisting, bark covered limbs with Elerian now in the lead. Expecting the licantropes to continue east, Elerian was dismayed when, just out of sight behind him and Anthea, the howls of the changelings told him that the creatures had followed their path exactly and were continuing their relentless pursuit.

“Some other means besides the power of scent draws them on,” thought Elerian grimly to himself. Growing worried for the first time, he spoke urgently to Anthea, calling out to her over his left shoulder.

“Return to the cave! The creatures following us have been ensorcelled, following us through magic instead of scent. I will draw them off and join you later.” For an answer, Anthea suddenly leaped onto a limb to her left and sped past Elerian before jumping lithely across the six foot gap between them so that she now ran in front of him.

“Anthea, this is no game!” called out Elerian despairingly, but she only increased her speed, fairly flying down the broad, twisting branches in front of her, perfectly balanced even when she ran lightly over some branch barely the width of her narrow palm. Grimly, his gaze fixed on Anthea’s flying form, Elerian set himself to keep up, at the same time wracking his brain for some plan which would allow them to escape from their unnatural pursuers.

“She will fail eventually, for she is still not recovered from her ordeal in Torquatus’s dungeons,” thought Elerian anxiously to himself. “Even if the beasts pursuing us cannot reach us in the trees once we stop running, they are still certain to bring their masters down on our heads unless I can draw them away.” Noting that Anthea had all her attention fixed on the twisting path ahead of her, Elerian began gradually to slow his pace and at the same time bore his right, opening a wide gap between them two of them without attracting her attention. Listening carefully to the pursuit behind him Elerian found, as he had hoped, that the pack was now behind him, ignoring Anthea.

“They are drawn to me alone, then,” thought Elerian to himself, a plan taking shape in his mind. “Farewell my love,” he thought to himself as he began to slow his footsteps even more. Ahead of him Anthea ran on without looking back, determined to give Elerian no opportunity to send her away. When she vanished into the leafy canopy, Elerian stopped suddenly. After retreating to the trunk of the tree which sprouted the wide limb he was standing on, he raced down to the ground, dropping rather than climbing from one handhold to another. Rasor in his left hand, he raised his right arm as the first of the licantropes appeared between the trees before him, running on all fours. Opening his third eye, Elerian saw a small golden sphere fly from his right hand, speeding toward the changeling’s broad, hairy chest. He was disappointed but not surprised when the charm flared harmlessly against the crimson shield spell that instantly covered the licantrope’s shaggy form.

“This Goblin was a mage before it became a beast,” thought Elerian to himself as he reached up and seized the licantrope by its corded, hairy throat with his left hand when it sprang on him. Holding back its snapping jaws with sinewy strength, he thrust Rasor into its right eye before it could tear him apart with its claws. The argentum covering the hilt and inlaid in Rasor’s gleaming blade flashed like white fire as the knife sank hilt deep, sliding both through the creature’s shield spell and its stony flesh. At once Elerian sank to his knees, borne down both by the enormous weight of the mortally wounded changeling and a wave of weakness that swept over him as his magical blade drank deep of his powers. A second licantrope now wrenched both its dying companion and Rasor from Elerian’s weakened grasp.

“My death will buy Anthea’s safety,” Elerian thought stoically to himself as the beast’s dripping jaws gaped wide to engulf his face and throat. Too weak to raise even one hand as he looked down its gapping gullet, Elerian blinked in surprise when a slender hand wrapped around a silver haft struck the changeling between its fierce yellow eyes, the blade of the knife piercing like a lance the red shield spell that sprang up to oppose it. Its brain destroyed, the creature fell limply toward Elerian, striking him with its long head and massive shoulders as the hand holding the knife slipped away from its hilt. Borne over onto his back, Elerian looked up in time to see Anthea collapse onto the ground by his right side.

“You will not leave me behind so easily,” said Anthea softly to Elerian as she laid her head on his right shoulder. Drained by the power Acer had drawn from her to slay the changeling, she remained there without moving.

“You should have run,” replied Elerian despairingly as he raised his head and looked past the slain licantropes lying by his feet, for racing on all fours toward him and Anthea were the two remaining changelings, eyes gleaming and mouths gaping wide to seize the helpless prey before them.

THE VALLEY

Drawing his right arm tightly around Anthea’s slim shoulders, Elerian felt a fierce rage surge through him, most of it directed at the two approaching beasts that were about to end both his life and Anthea’s, but some of it directed at himself for his inability to stop them. Time seemed to slow then, as the armband that he wore on his left shoulder, so familiar to him now that he seldom realized it was there, suddenly grew warm against his skin, as if responding to his anger. His third eye sprang open, revealing shafts of green light thick as a man’ forearm shooting briefly from the trunks of the trees around him, the beams all converging on his hidden armband. As they faded away, another greater shaft of light, this one originating from his talisman, shot through the sleeve of his leather shirt, striking a great oak to his left low down on its trunk. Closing his third eye, Elerian saw two great branches, their ends suddenly become like huge wooden hands with fingers for twigs, reach down and seize the changelings in midair even as they descended on him and Anthea. He could have reached out with a hand and touched their clawed, hand like paws when they were suddenly lifted high into the air, an enormous, bark covered hand wrapped around each of their chests. Agonized howls filled the air, accompanied by the snap and crack of breaking bones as the hands and fingers of the suddenly animated tree contracted and squeezed. Two heavy thumps followed when the mangled bodies of the licantropes, black blood running from every orifice, were cast heavily onto the ground near Elerian’s feet. With a rushing sound and a great shivering of its leaves, the oak straightened up and became just a tree again.

“Did you do that on purpose,” asked Anthea wonderingly in Elerian’s right ear.

“I have no idea what happened,” replied Elerian, who was as amazed and surprised as his companion at the sudden demise of the licantropes. After slowly sitting up, he took a sip from his silver flask of aqua vitae before passing it to Anthea who was, by now, sitting upright by his right side. “You are the most maddening creature that I have ever encountered,” observed Elerian in a half irritated half-admiring voice as Anthea also took a swallow of the restorative liquid in the flask. “One moment you are tormenting me and the next you risk your own life to save mine.”

“I am certain that Ascilius would suggest that we are exactly alike if you were to ask his opinion,” replied Anthea complacently as she leaned comfortably up against his right shoulder. “If you want a predictable wife, then you had best run away now.”

“It would be a simpler task to cut off my right arm than to give her up,” thought Elerian resignedly to himself. The feel of her up against him, soft and warm, with an underlying firmness that had its source in the long, steely muscles which covered her slender frame, was more precious to him than any treasure that he had discovered in all his travels.

“What now my lord and master?” asked Anthea dryly, her words rousing Elerian from the reverie into which he had fallen. “We cannot sit here forever however pleasant you may find it.”

“I suppose you are right,” replied Elerian, releasing her before rising reluctantly to his feet. Feeling somewhat revived by the aqua vitae, he pushed back the shaggy head of the nearest changeling with his right foot, revealing its iron collar. Drawing Acer from the creature’s skull, Elerian suddenly struck the collar with the edge of the knife. The lines of argentum traced on the blade briefly flared white as the thin circlet of iron split apart with a loud crack. Methodically Elerian did the same for the other three collars, retrieving Rasor when he approached the licantrope slain by that blade. His task accomplished, Elerian looked grimly at the silent black forms around him.

“But for Dymiter’s gift Anthea and I would be dead now,” he thought somberly to himself, wondering again at the purpose and nature of the armband that he wore. Warily, he approached the oak that had saved them. Laying his right hand against its rough bole, he briefly sent a little of his shade into the tree, the contact assuring him that the oak was only a tree and not one of the Ondredon. Only the power of his armband had animated it, a power which the talisman had drawn from the trees around him without any direction from him.

“We should be on our way back to the others, Elerian,” said Anthea, interrupting his thoughts. “Torquatus will know that his creatures have met their death and that they fell in this place because of the collars that they wore.”

Turning toward her, Elerian saw that she, too, had risen to her feet, an impatient look on her fair face. With a gleam of mischief in his gray eyes, Elerian suddenly flicked Rasor at her, hilt first, admiring the deft way in which she responded to his small challenge by casually catching the knife with her right hand. After bending lithely and slipping Rasor into her right boot top, Anthea cast an arch, confident look at his way with her dark eyes as if to dare him into another test of her skill and strength.

Instead of responding to her challenge, Elerian said quietly, “Follow me into the forest toward the water I hear running in the distance, Anthea. I have one more ruse to enact before we return to our companions.” Skilled in woodcraft and the art of the hunt, Anthea guessed Elerian’s intent at once, following him without question as he walked east through the trees. Light footed and silent as shadows, the bright-eyed pair advanced through the forest until they came to the stony bank of a small, fast flowing brook that ran southeast.

“With a bit of luck, Torquatus will think that we are fleeing toward Ancharia or the Abercius,” Elerian said quietly to Anthea as they removed their boots. After thrusting their footwear into their belts, they entered the cold water of the stream.

“This will do us no good if Torquatus sets more changelings on our trail,” said Anthea soberly as they waded downstream.

“Hopefully, he will not be able to enchant another pack in the same way,” replied Elerian, his voice pensive, as if he had already given the matter some thought. “I suspect now that he used something I left behind in Tyranus to bind them to me. More than likely it was my blood. I certainly left enough of that behind.”

Before Anthea could make any reply to his observation, Elerian suddenly leaped from the streambed, his sinewy muscles carrying him high up onto the wide trunk of a rough barked chestnut growing on his right. Anthea followed his example, her lithe leap achieving a similar height on the bole of the tree. Side by side they raced to the first limb, Anthea drawing herself onto it a hairsbreadth before Elerian.

“You lead!” she said with a knowing gleam of her eyes when they had drawn on their boots again. “I do not wish you to become distracted on the way back.”

“I cannot imagine what you are talking about,” replied Elerian innocently, but Anthea remained firmly in place until he set off through the treetops.

“This view is highly inferior to the one that I had before,” he thought to himself with a mental sigh as he ran lightly over the wide branches before him, maintaining a moderate pace that he and Anthea could sustain for many hours. Traveling entirely through the canopy of the forest, they arrived, without incident, just before dawn at the clearing where they had left their companions. The rain began again as they descended from the trees and darted across the open space before them, keeping to the stonier parts of the clearing where they would leave the least scent. Passing without hesitation through the illusion which hid the tunnel entrance between the two oaks, they sped down the passageway, drops of rain gleaming on their dark hair and leather shirts under the rays of the small mage light that Elerian lit. Eagerly, Elerian opened the hidden door at the end of the tunnel, but there was no sign of their companions in the passageway behind it.

“I wish that they had waited here,” said Elerian worriedly to Anthea as he closed the hidden door behind him. “There is no telling what lies at the end of this tunnel.”

“Ascilius will keep them safe,” replied Anthea reassuringly as, side by side, they followed the passageway before them. Several hundred feet later, they emerged from the tunnel, finding themselves in a narrow cleft with stone walls that soared at least one hundred feet into the air on both sides of them. After traveling north perhaps an eighth of a mile, the cleft suddenly opened up. Through the light rain which was falling, Elerian and Anthea saw a long, narrow, wooded valley before them that was completely surrounded by lofty, gray cliffs whose sheer faces appeared not to offer the least hand or foothold. A clear mountain stream flowed through its center, ending in a pool at the base of the gray wall to their right. The pool evidently drained through some hidden outlet, for its level remained constant despite the continual influx of water from the stream.

“This place is like a fortress,” observed Anthea as she took in the high, bare peaks that rose up beyond the cliffs that hemmed in the valley. “There appears to be no other way in or out except through the tunnel behind us.”

“A fortress or a trap,” thought Elerian uneasily to himself as he searched, with his keen eyes, the turf covered, treeless slope before him. The dim light hindered him not at all, but if the company had passed this way, even the heavy tread of the Dwarves had left no sign in the springy grass covering the ground. Alert for any danger, Elerian walked down to the pool with Anthea by his side. In the longer grass growing on its bank, he was relieved to see the print of a Dwarf boot.

“They went upstream,” he said to Anthea who had stooped to cup a handful of clear water from the pool in her right hand. Before Elerian could stop her, she drank a draught. “Take care what you do,” he warned her. “The stream may be ensorcelled. I have seen such waters before.”

“It is exceedingly cold, but there is no charm on it,” scoffed Anthea before drinking her fill. When no harm overtook her, Elerian drank too, for the chase they had endured that night had wrung him dry.

“Let us follow the stream into the wood,” suggested Anthea. “Perhaps the others are sheltering there.” Taking her own suggestion, she began to follow the watercourse, walking so lightly through the fragrant herbs and long grass that grew on its banks that she left no sign of her passage. Following after her, Elerian found more signs that their heavier footed companions had passed this way. After covering a distance of several hundred feet, he and Anthea stepped beneath the first trees of the wood which appeared to be made up mainly of oaks and chestnuts. Ancient and huge, they supported a well-developed canopy of branches and green leaves.

Slipping silently through the trees, Elerian and Anthea followed the faint tracks their companions had left behind in the thick drifts of wet leaves that covered the forest floor. When they came to the lip of a slight depression ringed by mighty oaks, they found the company sitting in a circle in the middle of the hollow. Hanging near them from a low growing oak limb was a fat, spotted buck. Not far from the deer were heaps of fresh dug majum, bits of dark soil still clinging to their gray skinned, rounded sides as well as brown chestnuts freshly taken from their spiny husks, and bunches of purple grapes. Everyone sprang to their feet when Elerian and Anthea stepped out of the trees into the hollow, and questions flew through thick and fast, but Elerian insisted on having his own answered first.

“Why did you not wait in the passageway?” he asked Ascilius. “Who knows what lives in this valley?”

“That was my intent at first, but near dawn hunger forced us onto our feet. After we exited the cleft, we saw deer near the wood. When we followed them into the forest, Forian brought one of them down. After we dressed it out, we discovered this hollow and decided to wait here until you and Anthea returned. We have only just sat down, after foraging for the majum and the chestnuts that you see by the venison. We lack only some sheltered place now where we can risk a fire. The tunnel beneath the cliffs is too narrow to hold all of us comfortably.”

“Let me see what I can find then,” suggested Elerian to Ascilius.

“Search away but hurry!” replied the Dwarf. “Soon I will be hungry enough to eat yonder beast raw.”

As he left the hollow, Elerian was not surprised when Anthea followed him. Although he would have preferred that she rest after their ordeal, he made no objection, for she had proved her hardihood during the chase. As they progressed deeper into the damp wood, showers of gleaming raindrops pattering down on them in bursts from the leafy canopy overhead, Elerian opened his third eye from time to time, alert for more magic like the illusion guarding the cliff face between the two oak trees. His persistence was rewarded when he suddenly saw, between the tree trunks ahead of him, the golden gleam of an active spell in the distance.

“There is something magical there,” said Elerian quietly to Anthea as he pointed out the distant gleam with the index finger of his right hand.

“I see it,” replied Anthea excitedly after she opened her third eye. Walking quickly but warily, she and Elerian approached the light, eventually finding themselves standing before an enormous oak whose lower trunk was at least fifteen feet across. With their mage sight, they saw a man high disk of shimmering, swirling gold set at ground level in the green column that was the shade of the tree.

“This looks to the door of an elf home,” said Elerian, speaking first in a voice animated by excitement.