The Wizard's Curse (Book 2) (65 page)

“Aw go on!” exclaimed another trapper. “After facing that shade yesterday, you won’t convince any of us that you can’t take a little drink. Here! Have another swig. I am Sliding Shale.”

Tarkyn took a more judicious sip this time and managed not to cough.

“There you are, you see,” said Sliding Shale with some satisfaction. “You’re getting used to it already. Much longer up in these cold mountains and you wouldn’t be able to live without it.”

Tarkyn smiled weakly. “Thanks. That might be enough for now.” He handed back the stone flask. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you boys.” A beatific little smile appeared on his face, “Hmm, I do feel warmer, I must say. Perhaps I could have just one more…” He stopped mid-sentence and went very still.

“What is it?” asked Waterstone.

“The brew has knocked him out,” whispered someone, followed by a couple of guffaws.

Tarkyn shook his head and blinked, “Whoa! I’ve just been deluged by a huge wave of self-loathing and despair.” He frowned as he thought about it, “Something else too. I don’t know, some sort of desperate determination.”

“Any images?” asked Waterstone.

“Wait. Let me tune in.” Tarkyn closed his eyes and let his mind drift towards the source of the emotions. He found himself looking out across a deep valley, from the edge of a high cliff. In the distance he could see lights of houses winking in the darkness and the moon shining on a ribbon of river that snaked its way across the valley floor. His view swung in across the treeline towards the base of the cliff until he was looking directly downward over stubborn small shrubs that clung to the cliff face. Far below, he could see white foaming water glistening in the moonlight as it raged across jagged rocks and swept around the base of the cliff before churning its way through a narrow chasm around to his left. As he watched, he felt it drawing him towards it, pulling him towards the cliff edge.

Using all the authority of his heritage and his right, Tarkyn hurled an urgent, powerful command into that distant mind to stay still and wait for him to come. Then his eyes snapped open. “It’s Hail,” he stated baldly as he relayed to his audience what he had seen and done.

Ignoring Waterstone’s tightened mouth, Tarkyn reeled off a set of instructions; “I need Ancient Oak, Rainstorm and Lapping Water to come with us to look after Midnight so I can move freely when we get there. I need Dry Berry, String, Bean and whoever else has some relationship with Hail. Waterstone, can you come if someone looks after Sparrow? And Autumn Leaves? He’s good at pouring oil on troubled waters. Anyone else?”

“We may need Stormaway and Danton’s magic,” suggested Waterstone tightly.

“Yes, good idea. Right. Who knows where to go? It will be quicker to follow you than for me to follow the trace. We have no time to lose.” Tarkyn lifted himself to his feet, carefully cradling Midnight so that he didn’t waken him.

The trappers didn’t hesitate. They knew at once where the image placed Hail. As one, they headed off up the path that Tarkyn had taken earlier in the day with a trail of woodfolk and sorcerers in their wake. They passed the place where Tarkyn had fallen and continued up for another quarter of a mile before turning along a narrow path that wound upward between boulders until it emerged on a plateau above. With Hail standing poised on the cliff edge, it felt like hours since  they had left the firesite. Once they could spread out, the trappers stopped and waited for Tarkyn to catch up. They pointed ahead to  their right.

“Up there. Probably another hundred yards, I’d say,” growled Growling Bear. “You can just see the beginning of the cliff edge from here.”

“Thanks. Lapping Water and Rainstorm, can you hold Midnight please? I’m going up there alone first…” He smiled gently in the darkness, “On second thoughts, no I’m not. I’ll take Waterstone, Autumn Leaves and Danton with me, if you agree. Give us five or ten minutes then Waterstone can send through a message for String, Bean, Dry Berry, whoever she will consider to be her friends, to come up and join us. We’ll send a message to you, Lapping Water and Rainstorm, when or if to bring up Midnight. Ancient Oak, can you please stand by in case Midnight wakes up and tries to get away?” He took a deep breath and looked around. “Ready?”

“Come on. Let’s just go, for heaven’s sake. Our lives and the forest are teetering at the top of that cliff,” hissed Waterstone.

Tarkyn glanced at his friend with a slight frown but set off a dead run, saying over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. We’re all right so far. No wind.” Even as he spoke, a sharp gust of wind struck them. His eyes widened, “Oh no. She’s faltering. Waterstone, if you can flick the last few yards and grab her, do it.”

They ran up the slope and curved around to follow the edge of the cliff. As they crested the top of the rise, Hail glanced at Tarkyn and then, standing with her arms wide, slowly, very slowly, fell forward over the space beneath her.

“
Ka Liefka
,
” bellowed Tarkyn. A bronze shaft of power shot forth, and held her horizontal, above the yawning darkness. The sorcerer’s bronze beam lifted her and swung her body upright, away from the cliff’s edge and back over solid ground. The shaft retracted slowly until she was deposited safely in front of them. She made to scramble to her feet but Tarkyn said gently, “Don’t make me stop you.”

She glowered up at him but subsided.

Tarkyn squatted down in front of her. “Thank you for waiting for me,” he said quietly.

“You tricked me, you bastard! I didn’t know you could do that,” she snarled, “I thought I could follow your order and protect the forest but still jump in time as soon as you came into sight.”

Tarkyn shook his head, “I didn’t trick you. You knew I wanted you to stay long enough for me to reach you. You just failed to trick me, that’s all.”

“Bloody sorcerers.” She spat at him. “Destroyed my life. Turned me into a monster. And now, when I finally find a way out, you take that from me as well. But you won’t. You can’t stand guard over me forever. As soon as you falter, I’ll be gone.”

“Hail, we don’t want to lose you,” said Waterstone, squatting down beside Tarkyn. “You are one of us. Your child is one of us.”

Hail hammered the ground with her fist. “But don’t you see? Don’t you realise? You are all better off if I’m gone. How could anyone want to live with someone who has been so cruel? How can I live with myself?” Hail dropped her face into her hands. “I can’t.” she sobbed. “I can’t live with myself for what I’ve done to that poor little boy.” Suddenly she whipped her head up and grabbed Tarkyn’s hand, throwing him off balance but not quite knocking him over. “You have to let me go,” she sobbed, “Can’t you see that? You have to let me go. I can’t stand it.”

Tarkyn caught Waterstone’s eye and jerked his head briefly in the direction of the others. As soon as he saw Waterstone go out of focus, he returned his attention to the distraught woodwoman.

Autumn Leaves was saying, “Hail, you are not to blame for the effects of the curse.”

“Maybe not. But your high and mighty prince there told me himself that my best was not good enough, even knowing about the curse.” She sobbed and sniffed before she could continue, “And he was right. All I could do was get rid of Midnight, hide him from my sight so I didn’t destroy him.” She blew her nose on a handkerchief that Danton had produced. “What a pitiful effort! And I didn’t even check to see how they were treating him. Just breathed a sigh of relief and left him to their mercy.” She broke down again, “Poor little Midnight. And to find him tied to that tree, with my kin fighting each other to stay one another’s hands…”

Suddenly she launched herself up and made a rush for the edge.

“Danton. Your shield! Over us all!”

Long before she reached the edge of the cliff, she was imprisoned with Tarkyn, Danton, Autumn Leaves and Waterstone within the aqua of Danton’s shield. She ran headlong into it and beat her hands futilely against its wall. Behind her back, Tarkyn looked uncertainly at the other three. After a moment, he took a deep breath and sent waves of compassion and calm to her.

As String, Bean and Dry Berry arrived, Tarkyn murmured to Danton, “I will place my shield over her until you expand yours to let Bean and String in. Then I’ll release mine.”

Once the two trappers and Dry Berry were within Danton’s shield, they moved to stand near the woodwoman. Bean placed his hand gently on her shoulder but she shrugged it off violently and sent a smouldering glare over her shoulder at him.

“Leave me alone, Bean. You have no more right tha
n
h
e
does, to stop me.”

“Hail, listen to me, we have always been your friend and Midnight’s. Is that true?”

Hail’s eyes narrowed but after looking for a trap in these words, she nodded reluctantly.

“And do you remember that we have always tried to stand up for Midnight?”

Again she looked at the question from every angle before nodding.

“So Hail,” came in String, “If we said something was good for Midnight, would you believe us?”

“You two told me to leave him with my kin. That was a terrible idea. Look what they ended up doing to him.”

String winced, “Lesser of two evils at that time, I’m afraid, Hail.” He looked at Bean helplessly. “This isn’t going too well.”

Bean took over, “Listen Hail. Let’s come from another angle. You know we have Midnight’s welfare at heart, don’t you? We always have.”

She looked at him through narrowed eyes before conceding the point.

“And if we told you something about Midnight, you would believe us?”

She swivelled around and stood belligerently with her hands on her hips, “Oh for heaven’s sake, just spit it out, whatever you’re wanting to say. I’ll judge what I think of it when I’ve heard it.”

Bean threw up his hands, “Right. Fine. Midnight is desperately unhappy that you haven’t been near him since the curse was lifted. He thought you would want to see him.”

Hail blinked in astonishment, “What utter rot! I thought you two could come up with something better than that. How could he possibly want to have anything to do with me after I treated him so badly?”

String shrugged, “Search me. I don’t understand kids at all. But  he does.”

“It’s true, Hail,” said Tarkyn quietly. “I’ve just spent the last hour holding him while he sobbed his heart out because you weren’t there. He needs you, Hail. He thinks that you must still hate him. He thinks there’s something fundamentally wrong with him if you still don’t want him. Midnight needs to know that you would have loved him if it weren’t for the curse.”

“
I
d
o
love him. And I did,” she replied hotly. Her voice caught on a sob, “But I hated him too. I hated everything he represented and he just drove me crazy. I’m not maternal. I was never going to have children. And how could I know what the curse was doing? Last night, when I saw his life, our life, from his point of view, it broke my heart. How can I live with that?”

“How can you die,” countered Tarkyn, “and leave him believing that the past is his fault? If you have any care for him, you will find the courage to live.”

“What right have you to pass judgement on my courage, you sanctimonious bastard?” snapped Hail. “When have you ever had to face someone you’ve hurt?”

Tarkyn threw a wry smile at Waterstone, “I once hurt Waterstone badly, didn’t I? And I faced up to him, but I admit it wasn’t easy.” He stared at the woodwoman, “And Hail, I had to face everyone that my father bound to the oath, knowing they would hate me and that my very presence would hurt them and forever be a blight on their freedom.”

Tarkyn felt a hand on his shoulder and glanced around to see Autumn Leaves standing quietly beside him before continuing, “I wasn’t guardian of the forest then.” He shrugged, “Well, I was, but none of us knew it. So everyone simply thought of me as an unwelcome outsider who had arrived to throw his weight around as his father had.” He smiled wryly at Autumn Leaves, “Would that be about right?”

Autumn Leaves gave a small nod and a warm smile. “Yes, I’m afraid it would.”

Tarkyn grunted. “Anyway Hail, none of that gives me the right to question your courage. But
I
hav
e
had to face people who were hurting because of me. And I do understand, because sometimes it has been almost more than I could bear.” He gazed unflinchingly into her eyes. “All I can say is that I have tried to diminish the hurt as much as I could. And I would like you to do the same for Midnight.”

Hail looked from Autumn Leaves to Waterstone, “Is this true? Has he, who seems so strong, struggled so much?” 

“If Tarkyn says it, then it is true,” said Autumn Leaves, self-appointed watchdog of Tarkyn’s integrity. “But I know it to be true myself.”

“Yes, it is true,” affirmed Waterstone. “We nearly lost him a couple of times because of it, just as we have nearly lost you. And if we’d lost Tarkyn back then, all woodfolk would have been destroyed by the curse that only he could reverse.”

Hail stared at them for a moment before snorting in derision, “I think my loss would be barely noticeable in the wider scheme of things.”

“We would all be diminished by your loss, Hail, your son most of all,” said Bean quietly. “And whether you wanted to or not, you have created a link between sorcerers and woodfolk that your death will not remove. If it had not been for you, String and I would never have met all these marvellous people. In fact, I think we would be dead by now, because only our association with you saved us when we gave away our knowledge of woodfolk to the prince.”