Feynard (40 page)

“Now there’s a thought!” Akê-Akê said merrily. “For if you are able to single-handedly banish the Dark Apprentice whilst blind drunk, imagine what you could do when sober?”

He stared at his boots. An awful feeling filled the pit of his stomach.

“Or perhaps if we kept you drunk all the time, we would be invincible?”

“Mighty High Wizard,” teased Alliathiune.

Kevin
groaned, “Oh, for pity’s sake! Do you have to bring
that
up again?”

The Dryad
gleefully explained to their companions the origins of this particular joke, while Kevin grumbled and fulminated to the stars above. He had a healthy dislike of being laughed at–being the butt of Brian’s jokes for years would do that, he supposed. But their gentle chuckles and ribbing soon turned to a more serious discussion about how they would approach Amberthurn, which gifts should be offered first, and how they would win his favour.

When
Kevin closed his book with a sigh and looked up, it was to see Snatcher’s eyes appear out of the pond right next to his feet. Darkness was closing in rapidly. A little ways back amongst the rocks, Akê-Akê arranged sticks for a fire.

“You can’t sneak up on me,” he smiled, beckoning the Lurk closer. “Do you miss the swamp, by any chance
, good Lurk?”

“If you were so alert, good outlander,” rumbled the Lurk, “where now are your bedroll, your boots, and your cloak?”

“Right … here? Snatcher! What have you done with them?”

A bubble of laughter rose from the Lurk’s mouth as he surfaced. “I merely moved them a ways off while you were not looking. Such fierce concentration upon the subject of wizardry is commendabl
e indeed.”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Tiptoe around like that! You’re ten flipping feet tall and as wide as a barn door, for goodness sake! It’s just not
possible!” Kevin wagged his finger at the Lurk. “Stop smirking, Snatcher. I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Your so-called scientific logic hardly
constitutes a sound basis for one’s perception of reality,” Snatcher said, confirming his suspicions. “You’d miss an awful lot of Driadorn’s life if you stuck to such narrow principles and preconceived notions of how things ‘ought to be’. You need to broaden your horizons.”

“I am quite willing to change my mind about things, should I be proved wrong–when and only when all the proofs are in!”

“Then you explain how your boots apparently leaped through time and space?”

“My boots did no such thing! I was merely lost in concentration while you undid the laces and pulled them off my feet, without me noticing
… well, anything at all, really. Oh heavens! How stupid do I sound now?”

“Th
at’s why they call me Snatcher,” averred the Lurk, popping his knuckles in that way that Zephyr hated most.

This occasion was no exception. The Unicorn clucked irritably, “Do you mind!”

Snatcher lowered his voice. “He frets about the Mancat, who is sore wounded, good outlander.”

“Will she recover?”

“It is a close thing. The arrow struck deep; close to the heart. Moreover, it was poisoned with
heth-niabar
, which is an extract of
niabar
, a
red berry common to the fens. It is a virulent but slow-acting substance which attacks the body’s nervous structures, by my understanding.”

“A neurotoxin
–is there anything we can do for her?”

“You could try doing whatever you did to the Faun upon Lyredin’s Way.”

“Ah! Snatcher, why not ask for the moon?”

“You’re
afraid.”

“Terrified.” A low, mirthless chuckle fo
llowed this pronouncement. “It’s selfish, Snatcher, I know, but I fear my grasp of magic is a tad precarious. What
you
call magic comes with a dire price for the foolhardy–and I’m afraid my actions were the epitome of foolishness, that lighttime.”

“You sought only to help Scillianstar.”

“The Dark Apprentice was about to slay a Unicorn. I thought he was Zephyr. I couldn’t tell Zephyr apart from his fellows, you see. Something just blazed up in me. I remember fire, leaping to my feet, wanting to blast that murdering scumbag off the face of the planet!” He held his hand to the light. “It felt good to be angry, Snatcher. I had all the right reasons for doing what I did.”

“Your motives were pure–that’s what matters.”

“Ignorance is no excuse.”

Snatcher’s gills flared, which
Kevin had learned to interpret as a sigh. “Persistent ignorance is no excuse, good outlander. Ignorance corrected leads to wisdom. Do I detect a hint of movement in your fingers?”

“Do you think so?” He tried to flex his
fingers, yielding perhaps a quarter-inch of play. “I’m doomed to be lame all my life.”

“Honestly, good outlander, you’d
make the most despondent Lurk sound like an optimist! I have more reason than you to bemoan fate.”

“Hmm.”

The Lurk was silent for a long time before whispering, “What do you mean, ‘hmm’, in that tone of voice?”

“It’s hardly my place to say, Snatcher–but don’t you think
235 Leaven seasons is a very long time to mourn someone? Even if she meant more to you than life itself?”

“You have obviously never been in love.”

Kevin sighed bleakly. “No. I’ve never had a chance, or a hope, or anything.”

Snatcher’s flat stare mellowed and he shook his big head slowly. “I’m sorry, good
Kevin. Those were hurtful and selfish words.” He rose out of the water and shook himself like a dog. “I should not have burdened you with my story that darktime.”

“If there is one thing your precious Forest has taught me, friend Lurk, it’s that companionship should never be undervalued. I hardly knew what I was missing
during all those years of loneliness I wasted in that godforsaken house!” Kevin’s eyes misted over. “I could never go back to that life again. You’ve taught me a better way.”

“Kê!” rumbled the Lurk, bowing stiffly until his eyes were less than a foot from
Kevin’s. “It your words which tipped the balance back at
ur-malläk tyak
, the hot springs east of Mistral Bog. Your prowess saved the Dryad in Shilliabär. You deduced whence this terrible Blight arose. And you defeated the Dark Apprentice at Elliadora’s Well.”

“I’d
be dead without you.”

His moments of humbleness
Kevin could have enumerated on the fingers of one hand, but as the words emerged, their truth rang clear. It struck him for the very first time that there existed a mutual dependence between them, rather than the one-sided receiving on the part of one Kevin Albert Jenkins, which had always been his perception. That was the role of the victim, which he had played for too long and too well. Did he indeed have something to contribute?

His mouth was catching flies. H
e closed it with an audible snap.

A frisson of magic sparkle
d in the pellucid depths of the Lurk’s beautiful eyes. “Yes, good Kevin. We Lurks have a sense of these things–an affinity with matters of destiny, you might say. We see things as they are, and we see deeply where others may not see at all. This is a power akin to the Dryad art of Seeing, only Lurks see in the present and rarely into the future. How do I know that your fate and that of the realm of Driadorn are inextricably intertwined? How does a fish breathe underwater? How does the river salmon find her way back to the hatching ground? Your fate and mine are intertwined, too. Our fates mingle with those of a noteworthy Unicorn and a unique Dryad, and with all our precious company. That, good outlander, is like the way the stars move. It is the way the Forest grows. That is the reason why I pulled you like a drowned rat out of the Deep Bogs, from the lair of the
K’xtäk
, and succoured you to the Unicorn’s care. That is my purpose–to find the threads that must be woven that the story may be complete.”

“I would never have thought it,” he admitted. “You
, the catalyst.”

Snatcher nodded. “A servant of the Forest. The least of us all.”

“Which depends, friend Lurk, on how one determines ‘least’ and ‘greatest’. What is the yardstick, who is the evaluator, and how or to whom is the result expressed?” Kevin made a steeple of his fingertips. “I have a great deal to ponder.”

“As do I–friend Human.”

As Snatcher abruptly moved away, Kevin called after him, “And I expect to see my boots back before morning!”

*  *  *  *

“What were you and Snatcher talking about?”

Kevin
wiped meat juice off his chin, drawing an instinctive hiss of disapproval from the Dryad. His attempt to look contrite failed miserably. “This and that,” he offered airily. “Destinies converging, death, past loves, the fate of the Forest–nothing deep or moving, really.”

Alliathiune bit into her
waycrust thoughtfully. “Ah, the mysterious Lurk has spoken at last. Has he explained why he decimated the Men of Ramoth?”

“They killed his mate.”

His succinct reply was designed to shock, and drew a sharp gasp of dismay. “That’s terrible,” she whispered, sinking to the ground as though her legs had lost all strength. “How awful–tell me what happened?”

In terse sentences,
Kevin paraphrased Snatcher’s story for her.

“How awful!” she repeated. “I feel so bad about how I have treated him!”

“It was a horrific revenge.”

“Grief stored as long as you describe without catharsis can lead to other, darker things, good outlander. When we choose not to forget.”

“There are things,” he said stiffly, staring at the leaping flames of Akê-Akê’s fire as though it were a refiner’s fire for the expiation of guilt, “that are impossible to forget. When your memory has been branded and scarred as with a white-hot iron.”

“I understand.”

Harsh words burst forth before he could stay their course, “You don’t understand! You could
never
understand! You weren’t there when I …” he floundered, “Oh, blast it!” Kevin covered his face with his hands, making an excellent job of smearing grease into his hair and all over his face. “Why do I have to open my mouth and spout such thrice-accursed baloney?”

Alliathiune
seemed torn between upset and amusement. “What is this ‘baloney’, good outlander?”

“Tripe! Rubbish! Nonsense! I swea
r I’m going to carve out this tongue and feed it to the vultures, Alliathiune! I just can’t control what I say any more.”

She said, “Such a remedy strikes me as
a touch swingeing.”

“It’s no less than I deserve.”

“Now, what did I tell you about wallowing in self-pity?”

“Oh, God–Alliathiune, it just makes it worse when you’re being nice to me!”

“Why?”

“Becaus
e … because of the Well.”

“Th
ere is that,” she said, coldly.

Kevin
’s hand, which had been halfway to touching her arm in sympathy and apology, had abrupt second thoughts and fled to his lap. “I’d understand if you never forgave me, Alliathiune. You must have felt humiliated–in front of Driadorn’s leaders, no less. I was such a
cretin!
It was just the cherry on top of an appallingly bad lighttime. You deserve better.”

“I most certainly do.”

He stumbled on, “I’ve never been drunk before. That Human and the Wolverine–they knew exactly what they were doing. I must have blabbed everything I knew about our quest. Half of it was garbage anyway because I was making it up, boasting, to make my part seem more important.”

“
Kevin …”

“No, Alliathiune,” he cried, waving her to silence. “No, no, a thousand times no! I told you when we started that I wasn’t the man for the job–but you believed in me! You insisted. I should have been firmer. I should have turned around there and then and demanded that you send me back to Earth, back to where I belong. This whole undertaking is a
huge mistake.”

“
Kevin, listen to me!”

“
I hate myself! Don’t you wish sometimes that you could unsay things? But I don’t suppose you’ll ever forget. Zephyr told me every last, sorry word. I still don’t remember–until the Dark Apprentice. And even there I messed up. My hand is ruined.”

“But you saved us,” Alliathiune said,
in a tone that suggested she would rather curl her fists in his lapel and shake some sense into one Kevin Albert Jenkins, than simply speak to him. “I am incredibly grateful. I also remain attached to my body, despite its defects and–”

“
Defects?
That’s rich!”

“Splutter all you like, good outlander, I am well aware that every single one of the Dryads you met that lighttime is slimmer and prettier than me.”

“Deny it all you want, good Dryad,” he shot back, “but I’ll keep my own counsel on this matter, thank you very much. For the record, I wish to state that I could not disagree more–” he searched the skies for inspiration “–more fundamentally and completely with you.”