Black Wizards (16 page)

Suddenly she heard movement in the undergrowth and whirled to see Acorn lunging toward her with a crazed gleam in his eyes. He cackled unintelligibly as he moved far faster than his feeble appearance suggested possible.

She lifted the stick and chanted the single word again.

“Stop!”

Acorn did stop, but not from any effect of her spell. Instead, the madman stomped his feet and howled with laughter. Then he became very quiet, peering at Robyn with intense concentration.

His look was the most frightening thing she had ever seen.

When he began to mumble words that sounded like spellcasting, her fright turned to sheer terror. Her mouth fell open. But Acorn couldn’t cast spells—or could he? What did his words mean?

And then she understood that he commanded druidic magic, as upon Acorn’s final word, a buzzing swarm of insects hummed from his hand to cluster about her on the riverbank. Robyn felt a fiery stinger lash into her cheek as more of the creatures landed upon her, seeking every patch of exposed skin. The sound of the swarm was a droning so loud that it seemed certain to drive her mad.

She suppressed an urge to scream—she dared not open her mouth. Instead she turned to run awkwardly to the stream. Her eyes were tightly shut as she flung herself headlong into the cool water. She forced herself to stay underwater, swimming downstream for as long as she could hold her breath. When she finally burst to the surface, she saw that the mass of insects was gradually swarming across the river, out of the Great Druid’s grove. The pain from her stings slowly subsided, but her skin still burned.

A small portion of the swarm broke toward her as she emerged from the water, but she cast a simple spell of protection, making a rapid
gesture about herself. The wasps stormed forward angrily, but then buzzed in a circle around her, unable to close through the magical barrier she had raised against them.

Acorn was already looking for her, giggling and staggering along the riverbank. Robyn splashed toward shore, hoping to get out of the water before he reached her.

The feeble-minded wildman paused again, and again Robyn felt that intense concentration that could only mean he was preparing to cast a spell. Crawling onto the riverbank, soaking wet and gasping, she felt very vulnerable.

She grabbed a root to pull herself up, and suddenly it squirmed in her grasp. The end of the root lashed upward, growing eyes and long fangs. She jerked back just before the undoubtedly venomous spell-cast snake struck. The snake’s fangs embedded themselves in the soft loam as she snatched her hand away.

More snakes slithered toward her from a tangle that had, before Acorn’s spell, contained only dry sticks. She sensed the serpents closing in from all sides. She paused, pulling a tiny sprig of mistletoe from her belt, and chanted a few words very softly as she crushed the plant to dust. She felt the aura surround her, and she knew that she had become completely invisible to the snakes and to all other animals of the natural world. The creatures writhed past, and her stomach knotted as she saw several forked tongues flick forth to seek her.

The madman still saw the young druid before him, but he also saw that the snakes could not find her. His carefully marshaled discipline—that self-control that had allowed him to recall powers he had long kept buried—began to crumble under the frustration of the thwarted attacks.

Abruptly, he howled in rage and charged toward Robyn, his fingers outstretched, clutching for her throat. His howl gave way to an equally inarticulate cackle as he reached her.

Robyn saw the man charge, and she seized a stout stick with both hands. Raising it high, she swung it like an axe at the madman. She had never hit anything so hard in her life!

She felt the shock of his broken neck travel through the stick to her wrists and arms. He dropped without a sound, his head drooping
grotesquely over his right shoulder.

Robyn’s whole body shook. She staggered backward and sat down heavily, feeling sick. Acorn’s eyes stared at her from his unnaturally bent head, and she watched them slowly grow dull.

But the power of the goddess had flowed through her, and from her, and her own strength had not been expended. Her shaking stopped, and she walked over to the body.

Acorn was unquestionably dead. His skin was already pale, and his head lay at that absurd angle. Still she knelt and listened for breathing, felt for a pulse. He was dead.

Then she noticed his pouch.

She had forgotten about the tattered wrap and its treasured contents in the time Acorn had been with her. But now she vividly recalled his fear when she had reached for it. Robyn reached for the ragged sack again and pulled the drawstring free. She hefted the thing, which seemed to contain a fist-sized rock. Turning it upside down, she shook it.

A black rock fell beside her knee. It was rounded and smooth, oddly shaped. It looked like a carving of a vaguely human heart that some craftsman had rendered from a piece of hard coal. It lay several inches from her, but she felt its warmth even through her leather breeches. The rock was surprisingly large for its weight. Its density was more like soft pine than stone.

She tried to look away from the stone and found that she could not. Reluctantly, yet at the same time feeling a tingling excitement, she reached for it. Her fingers finally reached the smooth ebony surface …

 … and her world exploded into black.

Newt meandered through the pines, thoroughly bored. He buzzed around looking for something, anything, to catch his interest. The air in the woods was thick and heavy, and lethargy contributed to his boredom.

His path took him back to the grove, but he was in no particular hurry. Without an urgent reason, the faerie dragon could not possibly travel in a straight line, and so his arrival could be anywhere from
hours to days away.

He reached the shore of a broad pond, hovering silently with a steady fluttering of his gossamer wings. Slowly he settled onto a wide pine bough, looking around the shore. Such watering places, the dragon had discovered, were likely to yield his quarry.

Indeed, he soon saw a tiny fawn, staring into the clear water on the other side of the pond. Instantly, Newt crouched, his tail arrowing straight behind him. When he was quite certain of achieving surprise, he acted.

He cast a simple illusion spell upon the reflection of the young deer. The unfortunate creature found itself looking at a purple-furred, fang-toothed horror that appeared to lunge out of the water, gaping maw extended. With a sharp squeal of terror, the fawn tumbled backward in a rolling bundle of gangly legs.

“Hee hee hee!” Newt squealed as the little creature finally stumbled to its feet and sprinted awkwardly into the woods. “I can’t stand it!” he shrieked. He nearly lost his grip as he slipped to hang below the branch, supporting himself with his two left legs. Tears clouded his vision as he scrambled back atop the bough.

“Oh, but that was marvelous!” he boasted to the forest at large. “Nothing like a good joke to move a day along!”

He decided that he must share this wonderful story with Robyn. She would cluck disapprovingly at his prank—she always did when a cute and helpless animal was involved—but Newt suspected that, deep down, she would be amused. And he simply had to tell somebody!

Springing into the air, the faerie dragon beat his wings so hard that they hummed. He zipped like an arrow across the pond and darted into the forest on the far side. Weaving among the tree tops, he raced toward Genna’s grove.

But when he reached the stream at the southern edge of the grove, he slowed. Something did not look right.

Newt gasped when he saw the bodies on the ground and quickly buzzed down to light upon Robyn’s back. With relief, he felt her breathing beneath him, albeit slowly. The man, he saw with little surprise and no regret, was dead.

“Oh, Robyn, wake up!” he pleaded, leaping to the ground and gently nudging her shoulder. “Please! It’s me, Newt! What should I do?”

He shook his tiny head frantically, looking around for some answer to his question, when he spied the black rock at Robyn’s side. Something about the stone seemed unnatural, repulsive. His nimble brain quickly connected the rock to his friend’s unconsciousness.

Grasping the offending stone in both his forepaws, he leaped into the air. With the most strenuous thrumming of his wings, he climbed, feeling like a lumbering condor. Slowly he flew across the stream, away from the grove of the Great Druid. After he had gone a mile or so, he dropped the stone in the woods and raced back to Robyn’s side.

With relief, he saw that she had already begun to stir.

“A sail! Tristan, a sail!”

The prince jerked from his slumber. He raised his head from the air bladder and shook it to clear the cobwebs. Blinking the saltwater from his eyes, he followed Daryth’s pointing finger.

“I see it! It’s coming right toward us!”

“Things are starting to look up,” grinned the Calishite.

“Call them,” croaked Pontswain, hope lighting his eyes.

“Too far,” said Daryth. “But they’re coming right at us!”

The little vessel indeed skipped closer. It had a single mast with a sail colored in a broad rainbow pattern. The prow was high, so they could not see the interior of the craft. As it neared them, however, they heard strains of a song sung in a clear, female voice.

“I knew a merry widow, to her neighbors quite demure,

But all the lads that saw her said,

The lady’s far from pure.

Now I can’t say the lads are right

(but I can’t say they’re wrong)

And I know that merry widow couldn’t—

“And what’s this?” The song was abruptly interrupted as a beaming, weatherbeaten face peered suddenly over the bow at them. “Three drowned rats—and some flotsam!”

Tristan’s greeting died in his mouth, so astonished was he by the
question and answer. The speaker was a stout woman, perhaps forty years of age. Her round face was split by a smile as wide as the sea. A garish hat, festooned with grapes and apples and huge flowers, sat astride her head, sagging nearly to her shoulders.

“Well, come aboard before I sail on by!” she cried, suddenly ducking out of sight.

But then a rope snaked into the air, splashing into the water between them, and each of them grabbed it as the boat passed only a few feet away. Tristan saw that it was a craft about twenty-five feet long, low of beam, but with sleek lines and an eager, seaworthy look.

They hauled on the rope as the boat’s lone occupant hoisted the sail and the slim craft drifted slowly to a stop. The woman had a lute strung across her back, and an assortment of canvas bags had been thrown into the hull.

She reached down with a large red hand and pulled Tristan from the water. The prince no sooner flopped into the bottom of the boat than Canthus, Pontswain, and then Daryth, fell in beside him.

“The name’s Tavish!” said their hostess, standing with her hands upon her hips as she scrutinized her passengers. She was shorter than Tristan, though she certainly weighed as much. Her face was pretty in a solid, farmwife sort of way. It was impossible not to be cheered while in the range of that beaming smile.

Her face grew thoughtful as she took in the sword at Tristan’s side. Self-consciously, he looked at the plain leather hilt, the worn scabbard that had rotted away to reveal some of the glistening silver blade and its ancient runes. Tavish looked back to his face.

“And, judging by your weapon,” she said, “I’m guessin’ that you’ll be the Prince of Corwell!”