The Banned And The Banished - Witch Fire Part 7

"The Gloriouss One wantss her-quickly!" The skal'tum spat in anger, his spittle hissing like a living thing on the packed dirt. "Do not dissplease the ma.s.ster!"

"She is ensnared in the walls of this valley. We will succeed."

The beast leaned closer to Dismarum, its tongue lapping at the seer's nose. "Or you will sssuffer for your failure." The skal'tum retracted the talon at Dismarum's throat and pulled its hand away.

The seer bowed his head to his chest. "The Dark Lord was wise to send you. With your help, we cannot fail." But Rockingham recognized the true hatred in Dismarum's words.

The creature c.o.c.ked its head back and forth, studying the old man like a bird examining a worm. "I know you, old one, don't I?"

Rockingham saw Dismarum shudder, whether with fear or rage he could not tell.

The skal'tum then turned to Rockingham, its red eyes bright with mischief. "And you, fresh one. I remember you."Rockingham didn't know what it was talking about. He could not have forgotten meeting such a creature, not in a thousand years.

The skal'tum rested a finger on Rockingham's chest; he trembled at the touch, fearing the daggered claw.

The creature leaned nearer and cupped the base of Rockingham's skull. Suddenly it whipped forward, pressing its black lips tight to his. No! Its tongue snaked between his lips as he tried to scream.

Rockingham fought the intrusion, but the skal'tum held him firm as it probed deeper. He spasmed in its grip; his throat constricted, and his heart thundered blood past his ears.

Just before Rockingham's mind snapped, it ended. The skal'tum pulled back and stepped away.

Rockingham fell to his hands and knees, spitting and gagging.

The skal'tum spoke above him. "I can taste her spoor in you."

Rockingham vomited into the weeds.

The juggler pushed into the room behind the bards-woman. Sixteen coppers did not buy much, he noted.

The sleeping quarters were dark, but the chambermaid crossed to the lantern and flamed the wick. Light did not benefit the small s.p.a.ce. The walls were in need of fresh paint, and the sole bed appeared to be the main source of sustenance for the handful of moths flitting toward the lamplight. The only other piece of furniture was a stained cedar wardrobe off to the side. He stepped over and creaked open one of its crooked doors. Dust and moths escaped. It was empty.

The room was also in need of an airing out, as it smelled of old candle wax and unwashed bodies. But its single narrow window, looking out on the inn's courtyard, had its wooden frame painted shut. Raised voices and the clopping of many hooves rose from the yard three stories below. The orchard's blaze still raised a stir among the townsfolk.

But the fire was of no concern to him.

The juggler waited for the chambermaid to slip out of the room after he graced her palm with a coin. He swung the locking bar in place and stood by the door until her footsteps faded. No other steps approached. Satisfied that no one eavesdropped, the juggler turned to the bardswoman, who had settled her bag at the foot of the bed. She kept the covered lute in her hand and sat softly on the bed's rumpled coverlet. She kept her face slightly tilted away, her straight hair a blond drape between them.

"The name you used-Er'ril," he said, anxious to get to the core of the mystery, "why did you call me by that name?"

"It is who you are, is it not?" The woman, small as a waif, gently placed the lute beside her lap, but she kept one hand resting on the instrument.

He ignored her question. "And who might you be?"

Her voice remained meek, "I am Nee'lahn, of Lok'ai'hera." She raised her eyes to him as if expecting him to recognize the name.

Lok'ai'hera? Why did that stir a memory? He tried to remember, but he had been through so many towns and villages. "And where is that?"

The woman shrank farther from him, withdrawing inward. She slid the lute from its cover. Again the red wood seemed to stir in whirls in the lamplight. "How soon you forget, Er'ril of Standi," she whispered to her lute.He sighed, tiring of this dance. "No one has called me by that name in hundreds of winters. That man is long dead." He crossed to the window and pulled away the threadbare curtain. Men with torches milled in the courtyard. Many others carried buckets and shovels. A wagon pulled up, and men crowded into the rear. The two draft horses pulling the wagon had to be beat with switches to haul such a load. Er'ril watched the wagon lurch away toward the road. To the west, an orange glow rimmed the foothills.

He suddenly s.h.i.+vered, remembering when he had last stood in this cursed valley. Then, too, he had stared out an inn's window toward fires in the hills.

He spoke with his back turned. "Why do you seek me?"

In the reflection of the gla.s.s, he saw the bardswoman bow her head and finger the strings of her lute. The lonely notes softened the hard edges of the room. "Because we are the last."

Her notes continued to draw him from this room, pulling him to a faraway place. He turned to her. "The last of what?" he mumbled.

"The last whispers of power from the distant past, of Chi."

He scowled. He had come to revile the name of the spirit G.o.d who had abandoned Alasea to desecration by the Gul'-gotha. His voice hardened. "I bear no such power."

She tilted her head, totally obscuring her small face with the fall of her hair. "You have lived for five centuries, yet you doubt your power?"

"It was all my brother's doing. He did this to me."

She whispered a word. "Shorkan."

Er'ril started slightly at the mention of his brother's name. He raised an eyebrow and looked closer at the woman. "How do you know so much about me?"

"I have studied the old stories." She reached out a slender finger and pulled aside a stream of blond hair to reveal a single violet eye. "And ancient words: 'Three will become one and the Book will be bound.' "

"Old words from a forsaken time."

Her eye narrowed at him. "You are no longer like the man described in the stories. That man rescued the Book, protected it. He searched the lands, trying to raise resistance to the Gul'gothal overlord. That man is rumored still to be roaming the land."

"Like I said, old stories."

"No, the same story." She let her hair fall back over her face. "It continues to this day."

Er'ril sat on the windowsill. "How did you recognize me?"

She cradled her lute in her lap and strummed the strings a single time. "The music."

"What? What does your lute have to do with this?"

She caressed the edge of the lute with the tip of a finger. "Beyond the Teeth, deep in the depths of the Western Reaches, there once stood an ancient grove of koa'kona trees. Do you still know them-the koa'kona, the spirit trees? Or have you forgotten them, too?""I remember one that stood in the center of A'loa Glen." His mind's eye pictured the sun setting through the tiered branches of the single koa'kona tree, its blossoms like sapphires in the twilight. "It grew higher than all the thin spires of the city."

Nee'lahn sat straighter on the bed and revealed her face fully for the first time. There was a sudden longing in her voice and eyes. "Does it still flower?"

"No. Last I saw it, the brine of the sea had rotted its roots."

Er'ril noticed his words seemed to wound her. "I believe it is dead," he finished softly.

Er'ril saw a tear roll down her cheek. She continued, a sadness edging her words. "The grove was called Lok'ai'hera, the Heart of the Forest. It-"

Er'ril stumbled to his feet, suddenly remembering. Lok'ai'hera! Like a river cresting its banks during a flash storm, the memory came to him. He pictured his father smoking his pipe at the kitchen table, one hand rubbing his full belly. The clarity of the memory weakened his knees. He pictured the spiderweb of broken blood vessels on his father's nose, the way his breath whistled as he pulled from his pipe, the creak of his chair on the plank floor. "My father..." he mumbled. "My father once told me about his journey to such a place in his youth. I always thought it a fable. He boasted of nymphs wedded to tree spirits, wolves as tall as men, and trees as thick around as our house."

"Lok'ai'hera is not a fable. It was my home."

Er'ril stayed quiet, picturing his own home. The memory of his father brought back a rush of old images, pictures he had been trying so hard to forget: he and his brother playing hunt-and-seek in the fields, the harvest celebration when he first kissed a girl, the way the plains seemed to stretch forever in all directions. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "What happened to your home?"

Her shoulders wilted. "It is a long tale of a time before your people first stepped upon the land. A curse was placed upon our spirit trees by a foul race called the elv'in." She seemed to draw inward, away from the dusty room.

Er'ril could hear the ancient pain that still ached her heart. "These elv'in of whom you speak," he said, speaking into her silence. "I have heard other tales of the silver-haired wraiths. I thought them creatures of myth."

"Time transforms all truths into mere myths." She raised her eyes to him briefly before again lowering her face. "You of all people should know this, Er'ril of Standi. To most, you are myth and legend."

Er'ril remained wordless.

She continued her story. "Over countless years, we sought a way to stop the death of our trees. But the Blight, the ancient curse of the elv'in, spread. Leaves turned to dust in our fingers; branches sagged, riddled with grubs. Our mighty home dwindled down to a small handful of koa'kona trees. Even these last few were doomed to die until a mage of your people came and preserved the last of our trees with a Chyric blessing. But as Chi's power vanished from the land, the Blight returned. Our homes once again began to die. Trees that had thrived since the land was young failed to flower. Strong limbs began to droop. And with our trees, our people began to die."

"Your people?"

"My sisters and our spirits. We are tied to our trees as you are to your soul. One cannot live without the other.""You-"

She brushed her fine hair from her face. "I am of the nyphai."

"You're a nymph?"

A tiny scowl scarred her lips. "So your people have called us."

"But my father said you couldn't live more than a hundred steps from your trees. How can you be here, half a world away?"

"He was wrong." Nee'lahn placed a hand on her lute. "We must be near our spirit, not the tree. A master woodwright of the Western Reaches carved this lute from the dying heart of the last tree... my tree. Her spirit resides in the wood. Her music is the song of ancient trees. She calls to those who still remember the magick."

"But why? The time of magick is long dead."

"Her song draws others like her, those with traces of magick, to her, as a lodestone draws iron. I have been traveling the countryside playing her music, probing for those with power. Her music allows me to see into the mind's eye of the listener. I saw what you remembered as I played: the towers of A'loa Glen, the fields of your home in Standi. I knew who you were."

"But what do you wish of me?"

"A cure."

"For what?"

"For Lok'ai'hera. I am the last. With my death, so die my people and our spirit. I must not let that happen."

"How am I supposed to help you?"

"I don't have that answer. But the oldest of our spirits and her keeper had a vision on her deathbed."

Er'ril sighed and rubbed at his temple with his one hand. "I am sick of visions and prophecy. Look where it has brought me."

Her voice swelled with hope. "It has brought you to me, Er'ril of Standi."

"You are placing too much significance on this chance encounter."

"No, the evening is full of portents."

"Like what?"

"The elder's dying vision was of Lok'ai'hera sprouting to green life from red fire-a fire born of magick."

She pointed out the window. "Fire. And now you-a creature of magick- are here."

"I am not a creature of magick. I am a man. I can be maimed like any other." He pointed to his missing arm. "I can die like any other. Only... only the blessed gift of aging is denied me. And that bit of magick is more curse than gift."

"Still, it is enough," she said firmly. "Fire and magick run the night." Her eyes glowed the same color asthe jewel-like blossoms of the lone tree in his lost A'loa Glen. "It is a beginning."

The screech of the winged beast split the darkness like a butcher's ax. The creature had been tracking them throughout the night. With the cry echoing in her ears, Elena added her weight to help haul Mist up the wall of the dry gully.

Joach's arms strained on the lead as he pulled on the horse. "It has our scent," her brother said between clenched teeth. "We need to leave Mist and run!"

"No!" Elena said fiercely as she slid down the dry streambed to get behind the horse. Mist's back hooves had sunk to the pasterns in the loose dirt, bogging down the horse. Exhausted, Mist did not even struggle to free herself.

Elena fought her way to Mist's rump. She ran a hand across the horse's feverish skin. Sweat dripped and steamed in the cold air from the beast's quivering flanks. "I'm sorry, Mist," she whispered as she reached for the horse's tail. "But I'll not let you give up!"

Elena gripped the horse's tail and hauled it back over the horse's rump, bending it cruelly. "Now move your b.u.t.t, girl!" She smacked Mist's hindquarter with one hand and yanked harder on the tail with the other.

Mist snorted explosively and bucked herself free of the dirt, throwing Elena to the bottom of the gully.

Landing on her backside, she watched with satisfaction as Joach, guiding and pulling on the reins, hauled the horse out of the trap.

A second screech suddenly burst across the foothills. It sounded closer.

"Hurry, El!" Joach called to her.

Elena didn't need his prodding. She was already on her feet and digging her way back up the loose wall of the streambed.

Once up top, Joach pointed. "Millbend Creek is only a few leagues that way."

Elena shook her head. "We need to hide, now! The creature is too near." She grabbed Mist's reins from Joach and pulled the horse in the opposite direction-toward the blazing fire.

"El, what're you doing?"

"The smoke will cloak us better and confuse the nose of the hunter. Now hurry! I know a place we can hide until it loses interest."

Joach followed, his eyes on the burning orchard. "That's if we don't get fried first."

Elena ignored her brother, trying to keep track of familiar markers. The smoke and her thundering heart confused her concentration. Was this the right way? She thought she recognized this area of the orchard, but she wasn't sure. She searched as she raced with Mist in tow. Yes! Over there! That old stone shaped like a bear's head. She wasn't mistaken. This was the place.

Darting to the left, she waved to her brother to follow. Hidden in a wild hollow ahead lay her goal.

Suddenly the blanket of smoke obscuring the stars overhead billowed as something huge shot past just a stone's throw from their heads. Elena could almost feel its weight pressing down on her as it flapped over them. It flew toward the gully from which they had just fled.Joach's eyes were wide in the meager light from the nearby fires as he stared at her. She recognized in them the terror that gripped her own heart. If they had tried to make a dash for the Millbend, they would have been easy targets. Joach nodded for her to continue, no longer objecting to their path toward the flames.

Elena led the way, quickly but as silently as possible. She allowed herself a soft sigh of relief when she spotted the Old Man. Leading Mist, Elena entered the small patch of wild forest sunk in a shallow hollow, an uncivilized oasis among the orderly orchard rows. She pushed through the brambles and led the way to the center of the hollow.

"Sweet Mother," Joach whispered as his eyes first saw the Old Man. "I can't believe it."