The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5) (23 page)

After Elerian retrieved the cord, Ascilius led the company west toward the pass, running along the ridge tops before him with no thought of concealment now, for the air was filled with the boom of Troll drums. The sun was rising over the peaks of the mountains behind them when the company reached the pass into the Broken Lands. Walking now so that Dacien, Triarus, and Elerian, who was still not fully recovered from Orgo’s deathblow, could regain their wind, Ascilius led the way through a stony defile where no trees grew. When he and his companions reached the far side of the pass, they were able to see far into the lands before them. The mountain they stood on fell away into rugged foothills that soon gave way to the green sea of trees that was the Broken Lands. Far to the west, a line of dark clouds was drifting east, obscuring the blue sky overhead and casting a shadow over the lands beneath them. Still opting for speed over the cover of an illusion spell, Ascilius led the company at a fast trot into the dark forest that covered the side of the mountain.

“We must get as far into the Broken Lands as possible before dark,” thought Ascilius to himself just as a tall Uruc suddenly sprang out from behind a huge, rough barked chestnut squarely into his path. To his right and left, Ascilius saw the pale faces of more Goblins appear in the shadows under the trees.
Silently berating himself for not anticipating that the pass might be guarded, he rushed at the Uruc, sweeping him aside and off his feet with his shield. His companions followed behind his broad back as Ascilius broke through the thin line of Mordi who had appeared behind the fallen Goblin captain, mowing down their slender forms with his shield and powerful shoulders. Before the remaining Goblins could rush up and surround them, Ascilius and his companions broke out into the open forest behind the cordon of Mordi.

“It goes against the grain to flee instead of fighting,” thought Ascilius to himself as he began to run flat out down the side of the mountain, “but speed is our only hope now.” Behind him, his companions matched his pace, but Elerian, who ran last, wondered how long Triarus and Dacien, too, could keep up. The miles they had covered since leaving Iulius had hardened them, but could they outlast the Mordi pursuing them?

“I may tire myself,” he thought grimly to himself, for he still felt the effects of the blow he had struck against Orgo. Glancing quickly over his left shoulder, Elerian saw that the forest behind him was now full of Mordi, their eyes gleaming redly in their pale faces as they ran through the shadows under the trees. Running among them were black four-footed shapes, canigrae and perhaps lupins too, all of them baying eagerly as they followed the scent of the company.

By exerting themselves to the utmost, Ascilius and his companions managed to maintain a slight lead over the Goblins pursuing them, but when they reached the border of the Broken Lands at the foot of the mountain, Triarus began to tire, his face slicked with sweat as he drew in great gasps of air. Glancing back again, Elerian saw that the swiftest Mordi were almost at his heels now, their slender forms flitting silently between the trees.

“They will overtake us soon,” he thought worriedly to himself. Resolving to delay their pursuers a bit, he drew his bow from its wrappings. When a glance over his left shoulder revealed that Elerian had his bow in hand, Ascilius immediately divined his intention and began to fall back, at the same time encouraging the rest of his companions to continue west at the fastest pace that they could manage.

“Lead the others away,” urged Elerian as Ascilius drew close.

“Lead them yourself,” suggested the Dwarf with a frown. “If you are going to stop and fight, then I mean to crush a few Goblin skulls.” Suddenly whirling about, he confronted the closest Mordi who was closing on him with a black bladed knife in each hand. His weapons did him little good, for in an instant Ascilius crushed his helm and skull with a blow from Fulmen. Behind him Elerian stopped and strung his bow in one fluid, unhurried motion. A second Goblin now appeared on Ascilius’s left, but even as the Dwarf raised his hammer to strike him down, the Mordi fell backward with an arrow in his right eye. Twice more, in quick succession, the same thing happened.

“Stop that,” shouted Ascilius angrily as he spun about to face Elerian. “Let me have at least every other one!”

“We had best be on our way again or you will have more Goblins around you than even Fulmen can deal with,” replied Elerian grimly. Looking back, Ascilius saw that a great pack of Mordi was now approaching through the trees with their hounds by their sides. Reluctantly, Ascilius retreated before them, Elerian running at his left shoulder. Although their companions were out of sight now, Elerian knew that they could not be far ahead. Every now and then as he ran, hoping to slow their pursuers, he paused for an instant to turn and loose an arrow at some Mordi who foolishly drew too close. Each time he released his bowstring, a Goblin fell dead with an arrow through one of his eyes, but it did little good, for another Mordi soon moved up to take his place, each one determined to be the first to draw blood from some member of the company.

“Take to the trees and save yourself, Elerian,” urged Ascilius grimly when Triarus and the others appeared ahead of him and Elerian, all of them running noticeably slower. “The Mordi will flank us soon, for our companions are tiring. If they come at us from all sides, they cannot help but overwhelm us, for we are too few to resist them.”

“Smell the air!” replied Elerian, his voice suddenly hopeful.

Preoccupied with their desperate situation, Ascilius had taken little notice of anything else, but now he became aware, for the first time, that the air smelled damp, and the wind was commencing to blow from the west, whipping about the branches and leaves over his head. The canopy blocked out the sky, but Ascilius was certain that it was growing darker under the trees. Evidently the storm clouds they had seen from the pass were drawing close.

“Not quickly enough, though,” the Dwarf thought to himself, for only a few feet ahead of him, Triarus was flagging badly. “We will have to make a stand soon,” he decided, for he refused to entertain any thoughts of abandoning the little man from the west. Ascilius had barely formed this grim thought in his mind before he and his companions suddenly broke out into one of the clearings that dotted the Broken Lands. The blue sky that had greeted them that morning was now covered with black clouds, and a strong wind flattened the turf covering the clearing. Great bolts of jagged lightning suddenly split the dark sky overhead, followed moments later by the rolling boom of thunder. As if someone had suddenly opened a floodgate, heavy rain began sluicing down from the sky, blinding the eyes of all the company and drenching them to the skin. Following his innate sense of direction, Elerian took the lead now, walking instead of running, for the driving rain limited his vision to a few feet. Behind him followed his companions, each of them holding onto the belt of the one in front of him.

The rain effectively ended the Goblin pursuit. Unable to see, the Mordi milled about the clearing while their hounds sniffed uselessly at the ground, for the rain had instantly washed away the scent trail of the company. When Elerian reached the forest on the far side of the clearing, he turned north, reasoning to himself that when the Goblins resumed their pursuit, they would not expect him and his companions to travel north toward the Trofim. The rain slowed only a little under the trees, falling in cold sprays and streams from the branches overhead each time they were whipped back and forth by the raw wind. The company donned their cloaks as they followed Elerian, the heavy wool warming them even when it was soaked through. Able to see each other now, they followed Elerian in single file for what seemed like hours. Ascilius was the first to notice that the ground had begun to slope upward.

“You have gone astray,” he said to Elerian, water running in clear rivulets from his mustache and beard. “We are traveling north.”

“They will not look for us in the mountains,” replied Elerian, his eyes gleaming under the dripping brim of his hood when he turned to look back at the Dwarf.

“We will be cut off from Nefandus if the Mordi get ahead of us,” warned Ascilius. “We will not be able to surprise them a second time.”

“It will not matter,” replied Elerian cryptically as he led the way deeper into the foothills, searching as best he could with his limited vision for a suitable place where they could go to ground. At the summit of a steep hill, Triarus, who was walking last in line, suddenly cried out when he slipped on a water-slicked stone and fell backwards. As he rolled downhill between the trees, he tumbled over a gray outcrop of stone, fetching up in a deep drift of last year’s leaves. Elerian reached him first and was relieved when he found that the little man was unhurt. He was also overjoyed to see the entrance to a small cave behind Triarus, the opening leading into the base of the outcrop over which the little man had fallen.

“Let us see if we can shelter here in this cave which Triarus has so cleverly discovered,” said Elerian cheerfully to the rest of the company when they gathered around him and Triarus.

“I will go first,” said Ascilius as he peered into the dark opening. “Dwarves should lead the way underground.” Bending almost double, for the entrance was low even for him, he pushed past Elerian, proceeding warily after that for cavities like this ones were often used as dens by the larger residents of the forest. Elerian followed behind the Dwarf, a bit annoyed that Ascilius had pushed him aside.

After straightening up in the tunnel beyond the entryway, Ascilius debated for a moment on whether a mage light would be safe. Just then, a particularly bright lightning bolt, striking suddenly nearby in the forest, illuminated the tunnel with stark white light, revealing a horrible, red eyed, white tusked visage covered with long, black bristling hair mere feet from the Dwarf’s face.

AN OPPORTUNE DISCOVERY

Uttering a strangled cry, Ascilius involuntarily started back, a high-pitched shriek deafening his ears as he stumbled over a loose rock and fell back against Elerian. As the passageway went dark again, both of them fell backward onto the stone floor of the tunnel, the heavy body of the Dwarf forcing all the breath from Elerian’s chest. Pandemonium now ensued in the pitch-black passageway as Dacien, drawn dagger in his right hand, rushed in, thinking to aid his companions, but instead, tripping over their prone forms. When Dacien fell on top of him, Ascilius immediately assumed that he was under attack from the horrible creature that he had seen a moment ago and began to blindly pummel everything within reach of his fists and feet. One of his blows immediately dislodged Dacien’s dagger from his hand, sending it flying off into the depths of the tunnel. Unarmed and unaware that Ascilius was the source of the blows whizzing past his head and body, Dacien tried to seize his attacker, both hands immediately finding their way into Ascilius’s luxurious and unbraided beard.

“Good heavens, a mutare,” thought Dacien to himself and promptly began to throttle Ascilius’s sinewy neck. At that moment, Triarus rushed into the tunnel, determined to aid Dacien, but like the Tarsian, he immediately tripped over his companions, adding one more body to the pile already on the floor of the tunnel. When a powerful arm wrapped around his head, Triarus promptly bit down on a thick wrist, eliciting a tremendous bellow of outrage from its owner.

“Help! I am being eaten alive!” roared Ascilius, who was the unfortunate recipient of Triarus’s toothy attack. Hearing their cousin’s distressed cry, Cyricus and Cordus rushed into the pitch-black passageway next and promptly tripped over their companions. Weaponless after the fall and fearing for their lives, they, too, began to pummel everything within reach.

Crushed and soundly thumped, Elerian, who had finally got his breath back, now began fighting his way out from beneath the thrashing, heaving mound of bodies that had accumulated on top of him. Finally freeing his right arm, he lifted his right hand and lit a large mage light that flew up to the roof of the tunnel, flooding it with light. Looking around him for the monster that he had seen earlier, Elerian suddenly began to laugh.

The light and the sound of his clear voice, now full of merriment, brought his companions back to their senses. Ceasing to battle each other, they slowly disentangled themselves. Luckily, except for the bite Ascilius had suffered, they were unhurt except for various kicks, thumps, and throttlings. When they had all regained their feet they saw, barely six feet away from them, the enormous, still body of a boar, his bristly black hairs liberally sprinkled with white in testimony to his great age.

“Look Ascilius,” said Elerian, his voice serious but his gray eyes shining with mischief. “You have frightened this poor old fellow to death. I had not thought you possessed such a terrifying visage.”

“It was old age that did him in, not my face,” replied Ascilius in an irritated voice as he prodded the boar with the toe of his right boot. “He must have taken refuge here after being driven out of his herd by some younger rival.”

“However he came to be here, it is to our good fortune,” replied Elerian cheerfully. “We now have food as well as a place to hide in.” Stepping past the boar, his light following above his head, Elerian walked down the tunnel in front of him to where, a dozen feet away, it took a bend to the right. When he rounded the corner, Elerian saw before him a good-sized cave that was at least sixteen feet long, ten feet wide, and perhaps eight feet high. There was no sign of any recent occupants except for the boar, which appeared to have made a bed in a drift of leaves that had accumulated in a corner of the chamber.

“This cave is the last element I need to set in motion the foretelling of the orb,” Elerian decided approvingly to himself as he completed his examination of the chamber before him. “Those of the company who remain behind when I travel to Nefandus can hide here in safety until the Goblins give up their search of the Broken Lands. When they finally accept that I will not return, they can continue their journey west as we originally planned, allowing all of them, with a bit of luck, to return to their separate homes.”

Abandoning thoughts of his future plans as his companions crowded around him to make their own examination of the cave, Elerian left his mage light in place near the ceiling and returned to the deceased boar. Ignoring the rain falling outside, he dragged the great beast by the front legs out into the forest and away from the cave, where he dressed it swiftly and skillfully, wrapping the meat he obtained in the beast’s huge hide. The offal and the bones, he left on the ground, confident that the leavings would vanish quickly once they were discovered by the small cats and elusive foxes that resided in the forest. Between the scavengers and the downpour, no clue would be left behind to alert any enemy that the company was nearby.

Returning to the cave with his meaty burden slung over his right shoulder, Elerian noted approvingly that Ascilius had hung a blanket over the entrance to the cavity, effectively masking the rays of the mage light he had left burning inside. When he slipped past the barrier and carried his burden to the rear of the cave, Elerian found his companions, already changed into dry clothes from their knapsacks, sitting around a small mage fire, the shifting red light cast by its flames playing over their tired faces. When Elerian set the skin he carried on the floor, Ascilius climbed stiffly to his feet.

“Fetch some green wood for me like a good fellow, Elerian,” he requested blandly. “You are already soaked so a bit more water will not make any difference.”

“Is there anything else that you need besides wood?” asked Elerian dryly.

“You might fill these with something appropriate,” replied Ascilius slyly as he handed over all six of the water bottles the company carried.  

“You are incorrigible,” replied Elerian good-naturedly as he took the bottles. Venturing out into the downpour again, he cut several limber branches from a recently fallen limb. The water bottles, he filled with clear water from a small brook which cascaded down the steep hillside to the east of the cave entrance. After changing the contents of the containers to a strong red wine with a transformation spell, Elerian returned to the cave where, with the help of his cousins, Ascilius had constructed a wooden grill over his fire with Elerian’s branches. Ascilius covered his improvised grill with boar meat, which he had already cut into pieces, and before long, the succulent smell of roasting pork filled the cave.

By now, Elerian had also changed into dry clothes and was sitting cross-legged on the floor with the rest of his companions who were already appreciatively testing the contents of the water bottles.

“I know that you are impatient to reach Nefandus, but I think we should remain hidden here for a bit until the search for us quiets down,” suggested Ascilius to Elerian after a mighty pull on his water bottle.

“I think that would be wise,” agreed Elerian, pleased that Ascilius had recommended that they remain in the cave first. “Had I suggested it, he might have become suspicious of my motives,” he thought to himself.

Much later, after everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, Ascilius extinguished his fire. After everyone had wrapped himself in his blankets and lain down, he also extinguished the mage light burning overhead. All of the company, except Elerian, quickly fell into an exhausted slumber. When he heard heavy breathing all around him, he rose quietly and left the chamber, seating himself near the entrance to the cave. The blanket on his right shivered from the wind blowing outside, allowing cold draughts to enter the passageway along with the drumming sound of the rain still beating down.

“I could leave for Nefandus now while they are asleep were it not for the promise I made to Ascilius,” mused Elerian regretfully to himself, but his resolve not to break his word remained firm. “I will have to take a more difficult path to save Ascilius and Dacien, too, if I can, but first I must render Fodere’s adamant into a device that will convince Ascilius to remain here after he releases me from the promise he forced from me.”

With his long right hand, Elerian took several scraps of bright argentum from a small leather pouch that he carried on his belt, remnants that he had saved when he and Ascilius made their weapons in Ennodius. After first lighting a palm sized, crimson mage fire, he arranged the fragments in the fire, the red flames of the magical fire playing over his fingertips as he did so. He took no hurt from them, however, keeping their heat at bay as Ascilius had instructed him in Tarsius.

Directing the heat of the fire into the argentum, Elerian watched closely as the silver metal melted, the fragments flowing together to form a small, bright puddle in the crimson heart of the fire. After withdrawing most of the heat of the flames from the argentum, Elerian divided the partially hardened metal exactly in half with the bright point of Acer. Casting a carrying spell he watched with his third eye as a golden orb of light flew from the fingertips of his left hand and enveloped both bright pieces of argentum. A gossamer thread of gold tethered the charm to his palm, supplying the power which kept it from fading.

With a look of intense concentration in his clear gray eyes, Elerian lifted the bits of metal from the fire to the level of his waist. Holding back from his skin the magical heat that suffused the metal, he used his long, clever fingers to shape the soft orbs one at a time. Each time the two pieces of melded metal cooled and began to harden, Elerian let them settle into the fire to soften anew, repeating the process until he had two perfect bands of bright silver hovering in the air in front of him.

Setting aside the rings, Elerian took the lump of adamant he had taken from Fodere’s dwelling from his pouch. Raising it into the air, he applied a parting spell to the middle of the gem, splitting it in half. One at a time, he continued to fracture the surfaces of the two stones until he had a pair of identical gems in front of him, each of them an oval three quarters of an inch long with a single great facet on top and many smaller facets around their sides. The dull, oily film that had coated the raw stone was gone now, leaving both gems as clear as water, their facets reflecting the red mage fire so that they seemed to burn like small red suns as they hung in the air before Elerian. After wedding a stone with a joining spell to each of the silver circles he had made, Elerian let the completed rings drop into his outstretched left hand. A single faint, clear chime rang through the air as they fell against each other.

“Now for the spells which will wake them,” thought Elerian to himself. Although he did not expect to use the rings that he had made, they must still be functional, for Ascilius was clever and a mage in his own right. If there was any deceit in the rings, he would detect it at once.

Laying the rings on the ground in front of him, Elerian silently began the spells which would give them their power, the words coming easily to him, for the charms were similar to the spells that he had used to create the ruby rings he and Anthea wore. As each spell was completed, a small golden orb flew from the fingers of his right hand, briefly enveloping both rings in a golden cloak of light. When the last spell was complete, Elerian felt a sudden weariness descend on him like a leaden cloak, for he had been a long time at his task and had expended a great deal of power to accomplish it. Extinguishing his mage fire, he became aware for the first time that Ascilius was awake and sitting nearby. The tiny mage light that rode the air above his head illuminated some of his strong feature while casting others in shadow, giving his face a grim, mysterious appearance.

“What have you been up to?” the Dwarf asked Elerian suspiciously. For an answer, Elerian handed the two rings to Ascilius who looked, with troubled eyes, at the flawless stones burning in his broad palm, each wedded seamlessly to a perfect silver mounting. “More rings,” he said disapprovingly. “Did I not warn you before that devices such as these are dangerous?”

“It was not idle fancy which led me to create them,” replied Elerian. “These rings are linked, enabling them to find each other across any distance. They will play an important part in the rescue of Anthea.”

“And what part will that be?” asked Ascilius, his voice still suspicious. He had no concern that Elerian would break his word, but he knew that his overly clever companion would have no scruples about using trickery to gain his release from the promise that he had made. Although they were faced with weeks of travel through Goblin and Troll infested forests if they continued on foot to Tyranus, Ascilius still had no intention of allowing Elerian some other means of reaching Nefandus. “The greater chance of success still lies with my plan,” he thought firmly to himself as he handed the rings back to Elerian.

“With all the lands to the east and south roused against us, we have little chance now of reaching Tyranus on foot,” replied Elerian calmly, almost as if he had read Ascilius’s mind. “It makes more sense for me to open a gate that will take me directly to Anthea, bypassing all of the traps that Torquatus has no doubt set for us, for he will expect us to enter his prison by the front door. One ring will go with me. The other must stay here, for once I have Anthea, I will need a locus to guide me back in the event that the company is forced to move in my absence.”

“You said before that a gate large enough to admit you into Anthea’s cell was beyond your power,” Ascilius reminded Elerian with a frown.

“That deficiency was remedied when I closed the gate inside the passageway,” replied Elerian. “The power which maintained that portal is now stored inside my ring, waiting there to be used as I wish.”