Saint Elm's Deep (The Legend of Vanx Malic) (25 page)

“After us?” Chelda’s look was incredulous and full of doubt.

“Yes, my dear,” the eldritch went on sympathetically. “I think it sought your group out from the number of hunting parties moving through the mountains. It followed you until it singled out its prey and then attacked you all right there in the open.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Vanx said.

“I’m not,” the eldritch retorted. “But you, of all of us here, know it’s most likely true.” The old gargan held up a hand to dissuade any defensive comment. “At least you suspect it’s the truth. You have a personal stake in the quest you are on. I can see it in your eyes.” He paused again and looked up toward the bar swiftly, almost like a spooked deer.

His brows arched, and he called out rather loudly. “You’ll be keeping all this to yourself, Ord. You too, Menna. You’re eavesdropping on eldritch business. You’ll either mind your tongues or I’ll tie them together and leave them that way.”

A grumble and a feminine snort followed from the shadows, and the eldritch turned back to his audience. In a conspiratorial voice he whispered, “No sooner than you’re underway, they’ll be telling everyone that comes through that another bunch of fools is off to find Rimehold.”

“How do you know so much about us?” Xavian asked.

“When you get to be my age, you become perceptive.” The old man’s smile was sly but seemingly sincere. “But none of that matters. I was in the middle of a rather boring tale about the Hoar Witch and the priest.” He drank his mug and extended it toward his boy, who reluctantly took it back to the bar to be refilled.

“Where were we? Oh, yes… the child. To be honest, I don’t think Aserica Rime bore the child herself, though he was surely of her blood. The craft she practices is a form of necromancy. To give life to the impossible creatures that crawl out of her cauldrons and bladders, she has to give some of herself to each of them.”

Vanx saw Xavian nodding, as if he understood that to be true.

“I believe that child was of the fae folk, as much as he was of the Hoar Witch,” the eldritch went on. “You see, the Lurr was a magical place long before Saint Elm or the Hoar Witch claimed it. It was a fairy forest, full of sprites and pixies and the like, so the oldest stories tell us, anyway. But, as with these sorts of things, the truth gets muddled over time. The child went on to captain a ship called
Foamfollower
and took on a Zythian girl, but I think you know that part of the tale all too well.” Once again, his eyes lingered on Vanx for a moment.

“What can you tell me of this?” Chelda pushed up the sleeve of her doe-skin blouse and unfastened the Trigon medallion she had tied to her wrist.

The old gargan only held it long enough to see what it was, then he threw it into the hearth fire with a hiss. The boy returned with his drink, and the old man glared at Chelda as he sipped. When he spoke to her again, he did so crossly. To everyone’s surprise, Chelda just stared at the floor as he chided her.

“That’s not to be had, nor worn, by the likes of you, girl,” the eldritch scolded. “That’s an evil thing, a thing of binding that can give your mind to the will of its enchanter. Many of our ancestors were controlled by such means.”

In Chelda’s defense, Vanx explained how they came across the medallion and sword on the frozen corpse out on the tundra. The eldritch listened and nodded but said no more to Chelda on the subject. He did tell them of the Lurr’s living trees, and of some of the strange beasts that had ventured too far out of the deep over the years, but he told them nothing that gave them any great insight.

Before he left, he rapped Vanx on the head sharply with his stick. “She is of flesh and blood, that fargin witch, this I know; but if I’ve grown perceptive in my old age, then she’s grown prophetic in hers, for she’s lived ten times as long, or more, than I. To take the Lurr from the fae, she had to wrong them. Most likely, they are her enemies.” He forced himself to his feet and let his boy put his cloak over his shoulders. “The true fairy clans of old always sprang up around a single wholesome tree. The fae folk, and even that old priest of Arbor, are out in the deep of that forest somewhere still, I’d bet. They’ll be rooted in deep. Make of that what you will, but you all must know that there is no great prize to be had. There is no dragon’s hoard or chests of gold. There’s just an evil old witch and her beasts, and they have been killing and terrorizing this part of the world longer than the lot of you together has been alive.”

With that, the boy led the eldritch through the door and out into the cold.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

We cast our nets into the sea
and heave a mighty pull.
And if old Nepton wills it,
those nets will soon be full.
--A Fisherman’s Song

Kegger fit right into the group. He was sure and steady, and when he had an opinion, he expressed it directly and without much regard for whether or not he offended someone, especially Darl, the other rim rider who was with them. On those first days away from Great Vale, Chelda and Kegger took to challenging one another. First it was dagger throwing, then archery that went on until enough arrows were lost that it was irresponsible for them to continue. Then, to Vanx’s amazement, they started spitting. The two of them spent the better part of two days calling out targets and trying to hit them with wads of hawked up phlegm and tiny beads of ice.

Darl was quiet, but not the friendly sort of quiet. He didn’t like the idea of taking all these ramma up into the deep mountains, and it showed. He didn’t like Kegger or the rest of them much, either. What seemed to irritate him most, though, was the fact that Kegger’s green cloak thoroughly trumped his pumpkin-colored vest in rank.

Darl never voiced an opinion, but if he disagreed with something, he did a lot of sneering, scowling and mumbling. He had at least warmed up to Gallarael, but that lasted only until a curious cave bear confounded them on the trail one morning.

Gallarael shed her cloak and instantly changed into her sleek, dark other self. Her roar startled the bear and a few of the ramma right away. Darl fled after the mounts, or, more likely, just fled. Poops found him later, huddling in some snowy shrubs. After the incident, Darl spoke only to the animals that were in his care and occasionally to Kegger to find out what sort of terrain lay ahead for the day.

Darl’s dislike extended beyond the two-legged companions. He looked at Poops as if he had a grudge against the dog.

Xavian grumbled a bit as well. The mage’s nagging complaint was based on what the eldritch said to them before he’d left that night. With the lure of no great prize to draw him on, and a lot more confidence in the notion that the Hoar Witch still lived and wouldn’t be welcoming, Xavian seemed to have lost heart in the expedition. To find Rimehold now seemed more like a deadly hazard worth avoiding than some great discovery.

Vanx had also been disheartened, but for a completely different reason. He’d hoped to gain some bit of knowledge from the old gargan, some tidbit of lore that would help him understand what was urging him toward Saint Elm’s Deep.

One night at the fire, after a steep, trying trek around an icy jut of dark stone that had exhausted all of them, Gallarael made an observation that restored a bit of purpose to the quest.

“If the Lurr was really a fairy forest, then might not the fae still be about?” Her comment was made as nonchalantly as ever. “Might they not have been held under the Hoar Witch’s thumb all these centuries?”

In a chilling mimic of Brody’s voice, Xavian replied, “Might they not have golden plates full of mushroom omelets waiting for us all when we get there?”

Only Kegger laughed.

Gallarael defended her argument. “If you see it, it’s clear. Something is pulling at Vanx. If it was the Hoar Witch, then why would she send one of her beasts to kill him? It might be something else that draws him, something she doesn’t want us to find.”

“The eldritch said it might have been a fairy that bore Captain Saint Elm, not the witch,” said Chelda. “That wasn’t so long ago he was born, was it?”

“Bah.” Darl rose angrily. “These here is spook hunten is all,” he said with his barely comprehensible accent. “Yeer all feels and a treein to get me keeled.” He stalked off to where the ramma were hobbled, mumbling as he went.

Kegger roared out laughing at the outburst, but Xavian spoke over the huge gargan’s deep-bellied mirth.

“I suppose getting to save some possibly nonexistent fairy folk from an evil witch should be enough reward for risking our lives against that malformed beast and traveling through an icy hell and whatnot.” The sarcasm in the mage’s voice was as thick as molasses, but he was smiling for the first time in days when he continued. “I suppose I’m here for my friend, as much as I am for the glory.” His eyes were on Vanx then. “If you’ve got to go into the deep, Vanx, I guess I do too. From here on out, I’ll quit bellyaching about it.”

“I don’t believe it.” Chelda shook her head.

“Thank you.” Vanx tried not to wince when he said the words. He didn’t want to feel responsible if any more of his friends met their end.

Poops wiggled over to Xavian, plopped his head on his lap and settled in.

“I’ve been listening to all your spook talk for days,” Kegger said quite clearly, but with a caravaneer’s crudeness to his words. All of the gargan accent that had been in his voice when speaking of knives and bows, during his battling with Chelda, was gone, as if it had never been there. “My orders were to get you to the Lurr and wait for you to come out.” He hefted his axe and thumbed the edge he’d been sharpening nightly at the fire. “I’ve got a good bit of unfinished business in them woods myself. ‘Tweren’t no frost bite that took his limbs. The tree that had my brother was real, I swear it. I had to cut him from it. It was foul smelling and as evil as the Letch itself. It bled thick red blood, just like you or I would, where my axe struck. I hurt it, and it screamed right at me before it turned Sean loose. It weren’t no magic fairy tree. This was as black and cold as the Letcher’s own wrath.”

“But you saw no sign of the fae in the Lurr?” Gallarael asked.

“If I did, I didn’t know what it was.” Kegger chuckled. “Deer, elk, bear and wolf. I know these signs well, but I’ve never seen a fairy turd, much less been inclined to look for one.”

*

The conversation went on into the night, and Aserica Rime observed intently through the senses of Warble, a ferret-mouse sneak that had crept up into the branches nearby.

Just before dawn, the little white-furred creature slipped past Poops’s sleepy guard and found his partner, Flitch. Flitch was a hawk-winged badger-like thing that could carry the smaller sneak in its claws as it followed the group’s daily progress from the air.

The Hoar Witch now knew that something was calling the young warlock to her forestand that his bear cub beast was but a young pet in a heavy shrew fur coat. The shapeshifter, though, was real enough. The raw power that radiated from her when she was in a beastly form was considerable.

However, one of the gargans would have to die first. The mage was nothing to her, nor the animal herder. Both of them were too scared to pose a real threat. The barbarian bitch with the Trigon sword might actually be dangerous, and the big gargan, Kegger, had already drawn bloody sap from her tree-kin. He was another matter altogether.

Aserica was confident that Kegger would remember the fear he’d felt before, at least if he was reminded properly. When the time came, he would flee with the mage and the handler. No, it was the big bitch with the blade or the shapeshifter on whom she would invite Slither to feed. They were the most potent threats in this little group of fools.

At least for now.

The warlock was a real threat, too, but the dark one had plans for him. All she could do was warn her beasts to be wary of him. In the meantime, she planned to find out exactly who or what it was that was calling the warlock home. Luckily for her, the shapeshifter had just unwittingly told her exactly where to look.

The fairy tree.

*

The next day brought the group out of a dense finger of forest, to the edge of a deep gorge. Across that they could see the beginnings of the sheer cliff face they’d soon have to traverse. It was a sheer, jagged wall of sparkling glacial ice. Just as they first laid eyes on the awesome site, a huge chunk of the stuff the size of a lodging house broke free high on the cliff and slowly tumbled away, only to shatter into a million pieces when it hit the frozen surface below.