Feynard (55 page)

He stirred the fire absently
with a long stick. “I am afraid there are simply too many clues here to be ignored. We are bound for the serpent’s lair. And consider this: what if the Dark Apprentice captured the Magisoul? Do we think we are lost now?”

“You surely do not think our cause hopeless, good
Kevin?”

“Nay, Alliathiune.” He was sounding more and more like them, he thought, more like a citizen of Driadorn and less like the insignificant
Kevin Jenkins of old. “But Trolls do not organise without a reason. I think we should make a still mirror. The Council needs to hear this new information.”

S
even vastly different sets
of eyes peeked over a small ridge, scanning the territory ahead with worried expressions. Beneath them, a long, narrow series of lakes cascaded like contoured rice paddies down into the lowest reach of Broadleaf Valley. There the abundant waters flowed into a huge, shallow lake bordered by a low, brush-covered ridge. Where Anurmar Gorge slashed into the side of the valley like a jagged knife-cut, the lake waters roared and foamed with savage joy as they poured in endless tumult down into shadowed depths.

The weather was oppressively humid.
Kevin wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow and then patted his damp curls. Gosh, what he wouldn’t give for a shower right now. He could see how Indomalion’s stern gaze caused vapours to rise like a gentle mist from the verdant, densely-forested slopes. Darkenseason must be on its way out, especially here in the hot south. His eyes wandered across to a herd of Huropods peacefully grazing on the riverine flora. Long, slender necks waved like a small forest of dancing snakes above the turgid waters, which deceptively concealed and buoyed their massive bulk. How many hundreds of pounds of greenery must they eat every lighttime to sustain those bodies? What a privilege, he thought, to be gazing down upon a herd of dinosaurs. But his companions hardly noticed the Huropods.

“That could be an issue,” said Amadorn, smacking his lips like a courtier in the throes of great distaste.

‘That’ was a troop of Trolls, who had set up camp smack in the middle of the path they needed to take.

“There’s no other way up to Shadowmoon Keep?”

“Good Dryad, the main gates open to the north, which is accessed by a narrow spit of land that leads up to the main Troll hunting grounds,” said the Druid. “Not only would it take us several moons of hard travel to complete that circuit, short of miraculously teleporting ourselves hence, but the chances of making it through undetected–how I wish now for a Unicorn’s mastery of illusion and disguise!”

“We are not without our resources, noble Druid.”

Amadorn began to ease himself back from the edge. “Witch, Lurk, Faun–we need a plan.”

Kevin
blurted out, “What about a frontal assault?”

“We may as well invite the Dark Apprentice to dinner! What a foolish idea!”

He reddened instantly. “Uh … that came out wrong, good Witch. I meant to suggest that we should not discard the obvious, direct approach–given the capabilities of some of our companions.”

The Witch’s mouth whitened in thin-lipped disapproval. “The need to enter Shadowmoon Keep undetected is paramount, good outlander. Thousands of Trolls could respond to an alarm and seal off ingress to the Keep before we ever sighted it from the path down in Anurmar Gorge.
We could not destroy so many before the alarm was raised.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

Throwing a quelling glance at the fuming Witch, Amadorn explained, “Look–the signal-fire is laid ready upon yonder promontory and guarded by at least a dozen soldiers. It is a standard Trollish ploy to aid non-magical communication.”

Kevin
fumed privately as his companions fell to batting about and discarding ideas and plans. Fancy not noticing a signal fire? The Witch was right, but it didn’t make her attitude any easier to swallow. He wished the wind would change and stick that sour grapes expression right on her sour face–permanently.

The still mirror Amadorn made at dawn had brought only bad news–further setbacks in containing the advancing Human armies, another attack by the Drakes on the Sacred Well, evidence of the Blight spreading right to the borders of Driadorn. Amberthurn’s promised reinforcements had been delayed by an unexpected storm, which had also grounded many of the aerial spies dispatched recently by the Council. Coincidence?
A plague on that Dark Apprentice! His ire rose as his mind clicked into gear. Storms on tap, eh? They would simply have to consider other methods of containment, and other means to gain the information they so desperately needed. If they could discover the Dark Apprentice’s lair, Amberthurn was prepared and eager to employ his formidable magic–in the meantime, he was winging his way over Driadorn toward the advancing Goblin horde to ‘roast a few furry rumps’ according to Two Hoots, that front being adjudged the most time-critical.

A
nd his mind turned also to the metal beasts and automata reported by the Council. They had promised drawings, but getting a reliable report back from the front lines had proved a real headache. Was there real technology out there? They had to be constructs of the Dark Apprentice’s devious mind. That said, anyone who could keep an automaton running as long as it had to poison the entire Forest and defeat the best efforts of their foremost wizards, was indeed a force to be reckoned with. He was under no illusions that the Dark Apprentice would be defeated as easily next time.

Should there b
e …
when
they met again. Kevin firmed the idea in his mind. He should prepare himself mentally for that lighttime. His old fear of confrontation lurked like a tiger in the subconscious jungle of his fears, stalking him in preparation for the kill. Would he falter at the crucial moment? Or plumb the risible depths of failure like so many times before?

H
e was fresh out of inspiration.

*  *  *  *

Kevin gasped in disbelief as he took in Alliathiune’s disguise. “Good God!” he spluttered. “Is that you?”

“Good
Kevin, your reaction is all I need to know,” rumbled the Troll, with a marked edge that was Alliathiune through and through. “Is my disguise successful?”

“You look intimidating.”

“That’s not unusual.”

“You look–” he cracked a wide grin, “–positively revolting! Especially the curly horns and the cracked, yellowing teeth.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I shall imagine you like this every time you become angry with me.”

“That’s quite enough.”

“The stench of rotten meat and moons-old sweat is very realistic too.
Putrid
is the word that springs to mind. Definitively putrid.”

The Dryad stomped her foot. “Enough, I said!”

“Be quiet!” muttered the Witch. “Sounds carry, even here. Good Kevin, will you attend me?”

Kevin
unwillingly submitted to having some mumbo-jumbo spoken over him, before the Witch anointed him with a few drops of a decidedly noxious substance. In a flash, the world lurched and he grew two feet taller–or so his senses told him.

“Very good,” said the Witch, looking him over critically. “Akê-Akê has r
un out of maglamma root, so you’ll have to keep that mouth firmly shut or the Trolls will hear you speaking Human. Do you understand? No whining until we are well out of sight and hearing.”

“Fine.”

“Now, the magic will make you feel different and probably upset your sense of balance. Practise walking up and down for a while until you get used to the feeling. You need to look the part when we go down there.”

“Are you sure this will work?”

The Witch’s eyes turned as frosty as a Darkenseason darktime. “At least I know what I’m doing when I work magic, good outlander. Until you reach that stage, I’d recommend that you keep your opinions to yourself and learn a modicum of respect–or I will extract it from your sorry Human hide. Is that clear?”

“Uh
… quite clear.”

Touchy as ever, he
thought. All of his companions, bar Snatcher, were as touchy as crickets with a bad case of the hiccoughs.

Working himself up into a fine old state, he fumed and huffed and frowned all the way down the hill behind what appeared to his eyes to be a motley troop of vagabonds. Even the Lurk had been
Trollified, if that was a word.

But as they approached the Troll encampment his
aggrieved mien gave way to trepidation and quickly, to outright fear. Might as well march into the lion’s den, he thought darkly, attempting a timid count of the armoured troop of
real
Trolls and giving up somewhere between forty and fifty. No point in scaring himself witless. No wonder Zephyr had derided them so openly. To a creature they looked like they breakfasted on nails and flossed their teeth with rusty chains. If this disguise did not work, then they were toast for sure!

Snatcher was their chosen spokesman. His voice was closest to those of the Trolls, and he was enough of a linguist to make passable conversation in the dialect of
Standard Driadornese spoken by these creatures. Akê-Akê would back him up if needed. He knew a few phrases, mostly curses, which had formed part of his education at some point. Kevin reminded himself to ask the Faun about that.

They strode openly into the encampment, neither appearing to hurry nor stopping to make conversation. It helped that Trolls were by and large a surly crew, not given to polite chit-chat or bestirring themselves to the effort of conversing with strangers when there were better things to occupy their time–such as tossing four-sided dice
made of animal hide, eating a stew brewed in huge cauldrons over a slow fire–Kevin tried not to imagine what their contents might be, for they smelled fatty and foul–or sharpening their favourite weapons, which resembled barbed, razor-toothed meat cleavers. Two burly fellows were wrestling in a bid to tear each others’ heads off their necks. When they rolled into a fire and nearly toppled a cauldron the cook brained one of them with an iron saucepan.

The companions were just exiting the far side when a large Troll appeared from nowhere and planted a huge, splayed hand on Snatcher’s chest.

“Urgle goes gurk to?” he said.

“
Flaggat Anurmar Gorge yum tek hoogley,” Snatcher replied, as best as Kevin could make out.

“
Hoogley booger bling mak grinder,” added the other, holding out his palm.

“Bling no have,” rumbled Snatcher, shrugging those mountainous shoulders of his.

“Booger bloody well grinder!”

“Bling no have!”

“Furgle!” insisted the Troll, becoming angry. “Booger bling!”

Akê-Akê put in, “
Ya flidder popadoff, booger.”

This evidently tipped the balance. The Troll made a grab for Akê-Akê, who sidestepped nimbly. Snatcher barred the Troll’s way.

Akê-Akê said, “Bling grinder up your fag pak.”

The Troll turned purple with rage and roared something incomprehensible. The Lurk shoved him several feet backwards. The Troll swung a great haymaker at Snatcher
, who took the blow upon his shoulder without flinching. He returned the favour with interest. There was a crunch of bone; fist against face.

The Troll fell backwards, taking with him
whatever fleeting interest the encounter had generated in the encampment. Fists were a perfectly acceptable way of settling an argument among Trolls. Having established beyond a shadow of a doubt their right to continue unmolested, courtesy of one Lurk’s skill at fisticuffs, the patrol of ‘Trolls’ hiked on down into Anurmar Gorge.

Once they were out of earshot,
Kevin asked, “What was all that about?”

Troll-Alliathiune smiled grimly at her companion. “That was one foolish Faun trying to show his bravery by baiting the Troll Captain.”

“Really? What made him so angry?”

“I didn’t understand the first insult, I must admit, but after that our precious Akê-Akê told the Troll Captain with anatomical precision exactly what he could do with the
bribe he was demanding.”

A ferociously ugly face glared back at them. “In case you were wondering, you meddling bush-brain, no amount of cajoling would have swayed that monument to stupidity back there. I simply advanced the most expedient method of winning our passage to the Gorge.”

“Oh, well done. You could have at least warned us.”

“And have it look staged?”

“Will you stop speaking Standard?” hissed the Witch. Kevin decided she looked better as a Troll. “There is no telling when we’ll run into more of them.”

Not very likely, thought the Human,
because the waterfall thundering to their right drowned out anything but a shout right in one’s ear. He tried to distract himself from the precarious trail that clung to the gorge’s edge like string tacked to a wall by thinking about the Blight. The trail plunged into the murky depths in a succession of damp-slick loops and rocky furrows interspersed with great, lichen-covered boulders that gave him vivid nightmares about sliding off into the great blue yonder and smashing himself to death on the rocks below. The footing was treacherous. Only the Lurk appeared to progress with ease, although Kevin did catch him glancing over the edge frequently.

But they did not fall. As afternoon drew in, coming early to the
foetid depths as Indomalion drew behind the nearby peaks, they neared the base of the waterfall and looking back in awe at the path they had traversed. Despite the gloom, they began to catch glimpses of the spectacular salt and sulphur formations for which the gorge was famous. The flow of Broadleaf Valley’s waters could now be seen to be jetting through a narrow cleft high above in a single, unbroken white plume that leaped thousands of feet into the plunge-pool below, before bubbling away into the mountains.