“Mine! I need it! Mine, mine, mine!”
“Stop him, Kevin!”
The shadow flashed across Alliathiune’s path, faster than thought, faster than she could move to stop it, and pounced upon the Key-Ring with a triumphant cry that shocked every rocky crevice of the chamber like a powerful blow.
The creature burst into being, a white-bearded old man, holding the Key-Ring aloft with an ecstatic expression on his face.
“Free at last!”
He gathered his power like a mountain, more power than Kevin had ever dreamed possible, enough magic to melt Shadowmoon Keep into volcanic slag and make it run down into Anurmar Gorge. He would overwhelm them like a Darkenseason storm.
“Fight me!”
screamed the Dryad.
The chamber shuddered as the Dryad
assaulted the old man, but he held her off with contemptuous ease.
Kevin lifted the
Magisoul its perch.
The wizard whirled. “What the …?”
“Here,” said Kevin.
“My beloved!” He might have been ancient, but the man moved like a mountain lion. He sprang upon
Kevin with hatred frothing upon his lips, incensed beyond reason.
“Mine! After all this–”
The old man tried to snatch the gemstone from Kevin’s grasp. He had not actually been holding it, but merely balancing it upon his ruined palm. As he touched the Magisoul, mid-shout, a look of surprise froze upon his face and then he crumbled into dust and was no more.
Kevin
shook his head slowly, regarding the pile of dust as though he wished to weep. “Just too greedy after all these years, old boy.”
“What
happened?”
Alliathiune seemed dazed. He drew her gently to his chest. “The
living dead is what happened. He gave up the secret.”
She looked at the pedestal,
and then at the Magisoul lying innocently upon the cavern floor. “But–”
“You can pick it up. It’s harmless now.”
Alliathiune automatically bent her knees, then straightened and looked Kevin right in the eye from within the protective circle of his arms. “I don’t understand. It wasn’t touching Tomalia horn.”
Kevin
held up his blue hand. “The living dead.”
She frowned in bewilderment.
“My flesh is alive, but not in any ordinary sense. It is only alive in a magical sense, destroyed by my foolishness but imbued simultaneously with sustaining magic. Therefore the Magisoul was not touching living flesh. It was still in that different state he alluded to.”
“But
… you couldn’t have known, surely?”
Kevin bowed his head.
“He was careful to attempt to move only the horns. That was the confirmation.”
Her eyes searched his from the distance of several inches. “But your han
d …”
“That
was chancy.”
Alliathiune sagged against him with an intake of breath. He held her until she found her balance again, until she could step back and let him see what she was feeling. Contrary to his expectations she did not explode with anger and remonstrate with him–but he would never forget what he saw in her eyes.
He mumbled, “I am very sorry, Alliathiune. But that wizard–perhaps it was Omäirg–was far too potent for either of us to handle. It was the only course of action I could think of in the heat of the moment.”
She whispered, “You must truly love the Forest,
noble Kevin.”
“
I do, my dear girl, but I suspect it has rather more to do with the appearance of courage in the face of my desire not to be the victim any more, for once in my life to make a difference.” His voice became ragged, charged with emotion. “It is you who brought me thus far, Alliathiune. Without you I wouldn’t be standing here. I wouldn’t be a fraction of a whole man. I’d still be the pathetic creature you–and only you–had the foresight to conceive might become Driadorn’s champion. Where I could not be coaxed you forced me on, even though I kicked against the goads. I am so ashamed. I deserved far worse than the restraint you showed.”
“Restraint?” she chuckled hollowly. “I count four fingers marked upon your cheek.”
“
Your
love for the Forest gained us the Magisoul,” Kevin insisted. “I did this for you!”
“You used me!” There, that was more like the Alliathiune he knew, hands on hips, words spilling out. “I thought you had betrayed the Forest and were giving that old wizard the
Magisoul! And I nearly ruined everything!”
“You used me too, may I remind you?”
The Dryad rubbed her eyes and said in a little-girl voice. “I’ll grant the truth of that, good Kevin. You did it in the end–I was just an encumbrance and a useless piece of baggage.”
“Stop it! You’re sounding like me.” They laughed together. “
If you hadn’t pinpointed the significance of the Unicorn horns, we wouldn’t be alive right now. That was incredibly perceptive of you.”
“But you knew what to do.”
“Yes, but without–hold on. Why are we arguing?”
The Dryad
giggled happily and bent to pick up the Magisoul. “Indeed, good Kevin! We each insist the other played the key part, when indeed without each other, all would have come to nought.”
Too right,
Kevin thought. But did she know his performance was merely an outcome of immedicable cowardice, and his actions the product of an earnest desire not to die, rather than the noble outpouring of ‘love for the Forest’ that she had suggested? But it had worked out rather well. He reached out for the Unicorn horns. Those belonged in the Ardüinthäl, not here in a lonely cavern beneath Shadowmoon Keep.
So he smiled at her and said, “Come on, Alliathiune, let’s go see how Snatcher is getting on with his twenty-three
mates!”
* * * *
If Snatcher had a swagger to be the envy of any cowboy, then it was to be explained by the coterie of sloe-eyed Greymorral Lurks who dogged his every footstep and jostled good-naturedly for the tiniest portion of his attention. He had not been idle, but after his four consecutive conquests–Kevin’s face was a picture at this point–he convinced the Greymorral Lurks to vacate their ancient home, if indeed his companions were able to break the curse. This was found to be the case as soon as the Magisoul was brought into the cavern that had been their home for so many Leaven seasons.
After
235 seasons of abstinence, the Lurk growled to Alliathiune, was he not entitled to a modest celebration? Kevin lost his concentration and plunged into a pool of mud at that point.
With all
possible speed, they passed back through the domains of the Fire Dragon and the Earth Dragon, and found nothing to trouble them. The champing, rocky maws had been stilled, and the Fire Elemental had disappeared–both perhaps having escaped to the outside world. Coming at last to the Labyrinth, they found the markers left by the Witch and marched back through the sandy tunnels–Kevin, Alliathiune, Snatcher, and a small army of Greymorral Lurks bearing the sum total of their worldly possessions upon their backs and prepared for battle.
“I’m surprised the Lurks chose to leave,”
Kevin remarked, thinking aloud.
“It is hardly surprising, good outlander,” replied Snatcher. “What kind of a life is it for creatures of the great Bog, stuck here in a cavern where Garlion never shines and the air is never fresh? Any life would be better than this travesty.”
“But it’s so far …”
“And did we not come all this way ourselves?”
“Quite.”
“So your reasoning is
worth a pile of Troll droppings.”
Kevin
growled in the back of his throat in a fair imitation of a Lurk. “But why should the Greymorral Lurks choose to return to Mistral Bog, when they were cast out by the Greater Lurks in times past? Surely there would be unrest?”
“There are some few here who remember the Bogs, good outlander. Mistral Bog has always been regarded
the Greymorral Lurks’ home and so they wish to return, despite the reception they might receive. But the deeper reason is that they care for the wellbeing of the Mother Forest–they care strongly enough that they are willing to lay down their lives to see the Magisoul safely back to Elliadora’s Well and the Blight defeated.”
Kevin
gulped awkwardly at this statement. Enough already–he did not want anyone else relying on him!
But as many times before, Snatcher’s heavy paw came to rest
across Kevin’s shoulders and he said, “They choose to share this burden with us, good outlander, regarding it as a high calling to serve the Forest. To refuse their aid would be callous and disrespectful.”
“True, any aid will be welcome against the Trolls, Snatcher, unless our companions have
dealt with them.”
“Let us pray for their wellbeing.”
Kevin marched on in silent contemplation, his heat-singed boots crunching slightly on the sandy tunnel floor. How was it that hundreds of Lurks could make so little noise? What awaited them above? A Kraleon with its dark claws outstretched, ready to receive the Magisoul no other had been able to retrieve?
He set his feet to the steps leading up to the dungeons. How would they return to Driadorn? If they could get close enough
, the Unicorns could translocate them back to Elliadora’s Well. But the Dark Apprentice must have some means of transportation apart from his wizardly capabilities. His mind ticked over. A flying machine, perhaps, secreted somewhere about Shadowmoon Keep. A tame Dragon? A zeppelin? Perhaps a small detour might be in order to find it?
They
came at length up into the chamber where they had left Amadorn and Hunter, to find bodies strewn across it as though sprinkled from the sky. Broken bodies hacked with blades, dark bodies lying in some places several deep, discarded weapons, blood seeping into the gutters perhaps intended to drain such fluids from the torture-chambers.
“Good God!” he gagged, sinking to his knees as if to pray for the dead.
“What a massacre!” Alliathiune whispered. “What butchery has transpired here this lighttime? And what of our good companions?”
“Here lies the Witch, Alliathiune. And that Izzit creature.”
Kevin stared about the charnel house in dazed incomprehension. This was different to the Men of Ramoth–they had been faceless, nameless, an evil people who perhaps deserved no better fate. But there was Amadorn, buried beneath a heap of Trolls who must have overwhelmed him by sheer weight of flesh and armour. He saw a Troll leg twitching in the last moments of life … over here someone groaned in mortal agony, a soft plea for surcease of pain …
T
he cost of the Magisoul was hammered home in his consciousness everywhere he looked.
“Hunter lives!” Snatcher called across the chamber. “Here she is!”
The Lurk heaved aside two Trolls–which she must have killed even as she fell beneath their weight–and knelt beside the Mancat. There was blood on her lips and face. Her body was such a welter of cuts it was hard to see what manner of creature she might be. Kevin had never seen someone look so grey with death and yet live. Her lips moved and she whispered something to Snatcher.
“Kê!” the Lurk’s laughter barked forth, stiff with incredulity and sorrow. “Nay,
o noblest of Mancats. There are none left to feel the kiss of your blade.”
As Alliathiune ran to the Mancat to see what aid she could offer, there
came a sound, a scuffle, in one of the eight tunnels leading into this central chamber and a creature came stumbling in as though pushed down a slope. He was tottering on his last legs, his face a mass of blood running from eyes that had been hacked out of their sockets, and he was covered in gore from head to foot. But his hooves were unmistakeable.
Akê-Akê!
The Faun stumbled into a dead body and swayed. His mouth moved and he tried to say something. The companions and the Greymorral Lurks starting to file into the dungeon behind Kevin–all stood transfixed with horror. Blood bubbled from his lips as he rallied himself for one final effort. “The Dark … is …”
He pitched onto his face and lay unmoving.
And a new set of feet, clad in knee-length boots as black and shiny as a beetle’s carapace, strode up to the Faun’s body and poked it disdainfully with a pointed toe. “I never had much time for vermin,” said the Dark Apprentice.
“You are all the vermin here!” cried Alliathiune, white-faced.
The Dark Apprentice smiled. His eyes flicked over the scene, taking in every detail as he licked his full lips in pleasure. At last he turned to Kevin, who was yet kneeling as though in supplication to the evil wizard, and now he smiled–broadly, and drew a deep breath that at once proclaimed a task completed and a moment of crucial importance.
His black-gloved hand rose to point at the Human. “You!” he boomed. “You have something that belongs to me–” and slowly,
prolonging the moment, the Dark Apprentice brought his hands up to his mask and tugged it loose, “–
little brother!
”
Echoes of ‘brother, brother, brother,’ resounded from stone walls and iron bars in cold mockery, until there descended a silence so thick that it seemed born in a tomb. The moment stretched unbearably thin.
Kevin vomited violently.