Dark Magic (69 page)

Haven Series
VOLUME III

by

B. V. Larson

Translated from the
Teret,
the compendium of Kindred wisdom:

Every night before the dawn breaks above us, our world is cold, the sky is black, and our souls struggle to awaken from the abyss of sleep. It is that moment of awakening that approaches us all now, the precise instant during which we must pass from sleep into dazed wakefulness—or perish in the attempt.

Let me attempt to explain: When a given era bumps into the next there is always a dark time of chaos in-between. We are in the midst of such a crucial time of change this very day.

It as if we have lived in darkness our entire lives, but are about to open our eyes and greet a new and promising tomorrow. It is true that such moments in history are often violent and unpredictable. However, for those of us who survive the coming transition, the future is filled with sunshine, warm fires and hot plates of fresh-cooked, dripping meat.

Look around you, Kindred, for you and I are all still dreaming! This is the moment before the awakening, but do not fear the new way of things to come. The morning will be better for those who live to see it than life is for all of us today. Fear, strife and war will ease and fade into memory for a generation.

At last, the time of insanity is finally ending, and the madness we have known for so many centuries is coming to an end. Our dreams will soon fly apart, and there will be naught left but their ghosts to haunt us once they are safely gone.

—Queen Gudrin of the Talespinners, written circa the Fifth Era of the Earthlight

Chapter One

The Witch in the Wood

After an unknowable number of years spent in a dark underground pit, Myrrdin had escaped his prison. He took the reins of a great living oak, using the power of the Green Jewel Vaul to do so. He freed himself from the earth and took his place in the heart of the tree he had animated.

During his long years of captivity, his thoughts had become twisted things. His spirit raged like one of the fresh Dead, and his new conception of justice was not entirely rational.

When he rose up into the Great Erm he had only a single thought in his mind:
vengeance
. He did not care if he was in the right or not, he only wanted to see his enemies die. He thought his victims might even agree with him on this point, for they were heartless elves.

Just or not, he slew as many as he could. Certainly, for the elves he killed that grim day, it did not matter if his cause was fair. They had been crushed down into the moist loam beneath the permanently shaded undergrowth, and they were no longer concerned with philosophical matters.

A dozen died, then a score—until Myrrdin couldn’t find any more of his kinfolk to slay. The thick roots of his shambling oaken body were encrusted with caked mud. The mud dripped, having been churned into a black mixture of soil and blood.

When at last he’d finished his task, he headed off into the trees. Inside the core of his living, raging self, he sang a lively tune only his ears could hear. It seemed to him this day was among the best in his long life.

He did not go far into the Great Erm. He waited there for only a few minutes, hunkering down behind a massive spruce as big as a mountain. When at last he could stand it no more, he charged back to the village, because he was not yet done.

He’d hoped to find those that had hidden from him wandering the wreckage, perhaps weeping for their loss. He was disappointed. He hunted for survivors, but found none. When at last he stopped trampling the village, the forest quieted to an almost unnatural stillness.

Myrrdin paused in his destruction, and the trees, which had echoed the din of murder not long ago, now stood silent and watchful. Myrrdin’s single exposed eye roamed the landscape. The elves were tricky and elusive. He knew this from centuries of experience. They were masters at both flight and remaining quietly hidden. So he waited like a cat outside a mouse hole, eager and staring.

At last, something stirred among the ruins of a crushed mushroom hut. There was a living thing beneath the debris. Myrrdin shivered with anticipation, and the great oak that encompassed his emaciated body shivered with him. Leaves the size of eagles rustled, despite the fact there was no wind.

Vaul itself seemed excited as well. The Green Jewel was somewhere within the great oak he drove as a man drives a horse down a lane. Myrrdin could feel the Jewel of Power whenever he stayed still, the way a hunter might feel his heart pounding within his own chest while listening for wounded prey.

Myrrdin didn’t stop to wonder at the Jewel’s excitement, nor at his own. During his long possession of the stone, he’d rarely wielded it this way; in anger. That it should now, after all these centuries, become a thing full of bloodlust and delight at the slaying of tiny creatures didn’t trouble him in the slightest. His only interest lay in what was at the bulbous feet of the monstrous tree with which he’d become one. There was something alive in that squashed mushroom hut, and he meant to destroy it utterly.

Finally, the squashed white meat of the mushroom tore apart and the creature trapped beneath it rose up from the wreckage, grunting. Myrrdin’s lone exposed eye narrowed in surprise, for this being was obviously no elf. While elves were always slight of build, quick of movement and lovely to look upon, this thing was lumpy and grotesque. When it moved muscles humped and twisted under the monster’s wart-crusted skin. Thick, gray bones jutted out and moved under that skin as if threatening to puncture through the hide.

“An ogre?” Myrrdin asked aloud. His voice sounded strange, even to him. His words were more like the croaking of a swamp frog than the light, melodious speech of the half-elven. This thought made him hate the elves all the more for what they’d done to him.

Hearing the wizard’s voice, the ogre looked around in surprise. Myrrdin found the expression almost comical. The creature clearly had no idea what had happened to the village and was probably a half-wit. It had most likely been asleep when Myrrdin’s rampage had begun.

Ogres were very tough; so strong and thick of body they were difficult to kill. Even the fantastic weight of a walking tree had not done the deed.

Myrrdin knew as he watched the dumb creature push away the rubble of the hut there was precious little revenge to be had here. Killing this monstrosity would be a kindness. He was not in the mood to show mercy of any variety, so he set his great tree into motion again wheeling away and turning toward the deep forests. He steered the oak like a man jerking a carthorse’s reins.

The tree obediently lurched into ungainly motion. With thumping, crashing sounds, it left the devastated elf village.

“Mother?” asked the ogre aloud.

Myrrdin paused. Was it possible this warped half-beast was addressing him? He wheeled the tree again and stooped slightly to regard it.

The ogre now stood atop the ruins that had once been an elven home. It looked around in confusion, furrowing and unfurrowing its brow in turns.

“Mother?” it called again.

Finally, Myrrdin began to understand. His lips thinned and curved, forming a tiny smile. He’d forgotten the origins of all ogres: they were half-elven, half-human hybrids. Among all the possible creatures that may issue from elf-human mating, ogres weren’t the worst, but they certainly weren’t the best, either. All ogres were males, and if they did mate with another being they were likely to spawn even more vile things than themselves—nothing as simple and natural as another ogre.

Myrrdin thought it very likely that this ogre was a young beast, only recently whelped by a female in this very village. It did him some good to think that he’d probably killed the ogre’s mother. She was not fit to live if she created such an abomination.

Still, he was curious about the ogre. Why was it living here amongst the elves? Why was it so young—suggesting that the act of procreation had been performed recently?

“Ogre,” he said, trying to force his voice to sound normal. “What is your name?”

“I’m Ivor.”

“And what variety of creature is your mother?”

The ogre appeared startled. He looked around as if suspecting the heaps of broken mushroom huts themselves had spoken to him.

“You know of my mother?” he asked.

“No, you fool, I do not. That’s I’m asking you about her.”

“Where is my mother?” asked the ogre again, stepping toward the tree.

Ivor had determined that the oak was the source of the voice, and he did not seem surprised by the fact that a giant mobile oak tree had addressed him. Myrrdin could understand that. Any youngster who had been raised in the Great Erm must become accustomed to any number of strange occurrences.

“I’m not sure where she is,” Myrrdin said. “But if you describe her to me, I might be able to find her.”

“Mother is small,” he said.

Myrrdin rolled his one eye impatiently. “Yes, of course. But is she elf or is she human?”

“She’s elf.”

Myrrdin smiled. He knew then what had likely been the fate of this elf-witch who’d dared to gestate such a horror. She was probably under the fallen walls of another of these huts—Myrrdin himself had probably killed her with his vast, flopping roots. The thought brought him pleasure.

“An elf, you say?” Myrrdin said. “That’s very interesting. Do you recall her name?”

“Tegan.”

“Of course—one of Oberon’s youngest daughters. Do you know what you are, Ivor?”

The ogre hunched its shoulders and looked sullen. Doubtlessly, he’d been abused and teased all his short life about being an ogre. The more Myrrdin studied him, the more he thought the disgusting beast might be helpful.

“I’m an ogre,” Ivor said at last.

“Yes, but you’re more than that. You sir, are my nephew! My blood kin. Isn’t that surprising?”

Ivor indeed looked surprised. “Cousin? You’re a tree.”

“No, not cousin, you fool! I’m your
uncle
. And yes, I’m a tree. I don’t look like an elf, but then, neither do you. Oberon is my sire. I’m a half-elf, and Tegan was—um,
is
my half-sister. And that makes you my nephew. Do you understand? We’re family, you and I.”

“Okay…” said Ivor doubtfully. “So, where’s my mother?”

“I think she needs us,” Myrrdin said in a tone that denoted certainty. “We have to find her and help her. In fact, I think we can help each other. Will you help me, Ivor? Will you follow your uncle and do as he says? If you do, I’m sure we can find your mother for you.”

Ivor looked at him doubtfully. He kicked at the rubble of the hut he’d escaped. “Promise?” he asked.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Okay then, Uncle,” Ivor said at last. “I will follow you.”

Myrrdin’s lips thinned and the corners of his mouth upturned. The lips parted to reveal yellow teeth. He was grinning now. Grinning broadly.

* * *

In the Haven, time ran differently than it did in the Twilight Lands. In most cases, it ran faster in the lands of humanity than it did in lands of the Faerie. And so it was that even while Myrrdin spent a long while in his underground prison in the Great Erm, an even greater time had passed in the Haven. By the time he’d freed himself and destroyed an elf village, the short lives of humanity had trundled eleven years onward.

Trev was a half-elf with silver locks, quick feet, quick eyes and quick hands. He had grown up in the Haven and as was often the case with his folk, his body matured faster than did his mind. He now stood six inches taller than his mother and only six inches shorter than Brand himself. But people still considered him a foolish youth.

He had been a restless boy throughout his short life. By the time he was seventeen years old, he’d explored every inch of the Haven, from the Haven Wood to the Deepwood, from North End to the Border Downs. He knew the marshes, the shores of Glasswater Lake, and had even reached the foot of the Black Mountains to the west. But he’d never completely left the lands of his birth—not yet.

His mother, Mari, was still young and strong. But her face had become careworn with the passing of the years and she often traced each line on her fair skin while she scolded Trev.

“See this one?” she demanded with one finger on her brow. “That’s the one that came to me the night you went up to the cemetery alone to play with the Dead things.”

“I didn’t
play
with them, mother,” insisted Trev. “I would rather say that
they
tried to play with
me
.”

She waved away his words. “Don’t try to change the subject. I’ve got a new wrinkle just today. A fresh one under my chin. I hate these—see it as I look down? It’s deepened now into a permanent crease.”

Trev peered at her, but for his life he couldn’t see a difference. “You look the same to me as the hour before I left.”

She scowled at him. Somehow, this response hadn’t pleased her. Trev had been under the impression that telling women they looked young was a compliment, but he’d often been wrong in trying to predict their reactions.

“You’ve been gone a week without so much as sending word. Tell me now, and don’t lie, where have you been, Trev?”

“I never lie, mother.”

“Well, don’t twist the truth, then. Just tell me.”

Trev’s eyes traveled around the cottage. There was nothing much here to rescue him. There was a row of old leather hats over the door. The firewood pile stacked near the stove was small, but adequate for cooking in springtime. The creaking floorboards were uneven, but meticulously dusted.

His eyes fell at last upon the butter-churn near the cooking hearth. It stood forgotten where Mari had left it when Trev had come through the door, returning abruptly and unannounced.

Trev stepped to the churn. Cream had trickled down the sides of the hickory device and puddled on the floor. With a half-smile, he took hold of the broom handle-like stick that thrust up from the churn and began working it vigorously. It was a chore he’d hated all his life. He didn’t care much for butter even when it was finished. But now he went to work on the plunger, which made sloshing sounds as his efforts drove it up and down.

“What’s this then?” Mari asked. “No answer, just a few chores done? Do you know that’s what your father would do when he went away and wandered back a month later? He’d mend the roof, or carve a bowl for me.”

Trev kept churning. He turned a smile to his mother. “Do you miss him?”

“Of course I do! What kind of question is that? Are you trying to change the subject now as well?”

“No…” Trev said. “I just wondered about missing him. I mean, I wonder how it really works to feel pain at the absence of another. He’s still in my head and my heart, you know. Part of me still thinks father will return one day. That this disappearance of his is just another unusually long visit to his other life in the Twilight Lands.”