Prophet of Moonshae

17

"Look!" Alicia pointed upward from the Gullwing's hull. The vessel still raced along the trough in the sea carved by Keane's spell. Now the princess wanted to scream, but her voice remained level and firm. "Dragon!"

The huge beast dropped from the gray overcast, dimly visible in the fading light of day. Wings as broad as the Gullwing's length spread across the sky, and a horrific head drooped at the end of a sinuous neck. Scales of dull red, crusted over with rot and mold, formed a patchwork of skin, gaping to show white bone. Gleaming red eyes compelled attention, glowing spots of fire that burned within the black chasms of their sockets. Jaws wide, the monster plummeted toward the sleek longship.

Keane's head whipped around to follow Alicia's gaze, and immediately the concentration of his part water spell broke. Waves heaved around the vessel, though not so violently as those that had threatened to swamp her earlier in the day.

"Archers! To arms!" cried Brandon. The prince himself seized a long harpoon from the hull and raised it to his shoulder, turning to face the creature that swooped toward them from the rear.

Tavish immediately changed her song, striking a series of martial chords that filled Alicia's heart with savage courage. The princess drew her sword and stood beside the prince, uncaring that the weapon would be of little use against the monstrous presence in the sky.

"Let fly!" shouted the prince.

A dozen northmen launched arrows, but as the missiles soared upward, they all realized the futility of the attack. Most of them fell short, and those that struck the great snout seemed little more than slivers in the face of the monstrous foe.

Staring at the beast, Alicia felt the awe-inspiring presence of the great serpent strike terror into her heart. Her knees weakened, and her vision blurred as she reached out to grasp the mast for support. Even Brandon, she sensed, grew numb at the sight of imminent, diving death.

But then Tavish struck her harp again, and the magical strings sent notes of heroism and pride through the air. Alicia heard them and shrugged off her fear, to be replaced with a cool anger that brought her to a peak of fighting efficiency. All around she felt the northmen reacting to the enchanted harp and the spell woven by the skilled bard, a spell that vanquished their fear and cleared their heads for battle.

Beside her, Brandon grunted as he hurled his harpoon. The heavy missile soared upward to bury its barbed head in the monster's chest. The dragon's mouth gaped as it bellowed its rage, and then a rumbling roar assailed them. Smoke belched forth, and staring into that hateful maw, Alicia saw a billowing inferno of fire start to erupt.

"Frigidius! Karythi!"

Keane pointed his finger straight into those murderous jaws and shouted the command of a spell. As the dragon's fireball breath erupted, a blast of white light exploded from Keane's hand, meeting the fiery cloud in midair. The princess felt a blast of frost-the icy effect of the wizard's spell.

The two arcane forces, one of unnatural hotness and the other of equally extreme cold, met in the air with a sound like a thunderclap. The force of the explosion rocked the Gullwing in the water, sending Alicia tumbling.

The pressure of the blast surged outward as wind, smashing the diving serpent to the side. The monster, struggling desperately to stay aloft, nearly struck the tops of the gray waves. Veering wildly, pressing powerful strokes downward with its vast wings, the creature barely stayed above the water. Striving to fly, it slowly gained altitude as it flew away from the ship, trailed by another volley of arrows that fell well short of its scaled tail.

"Well met, my hearties!" Tavish's voice, full of cheer and confidence, boomed from the stern. Surprised, Alicia saw that even Knaff the Elder looked at the bard with respect from his position at the helm.

"Did we drive it off?" Alicia wondered, looking at the gray cloud where the serpent had disappeared.

"I doubt it," Keane said sourly. "Though perhaps we surprised it a little."

"You surprised it," Brandon said, looking at Keane with frank appreciation. "Sorcery or not, that was well done!"

"Look!" Giant Wultha, in the center of the longship, pointed skyward and shouted. "It comes again!"

"And here, to port!" Knaff added his own cry to the alarm. Unlike everyone else, the grizzled veteran had not confined his attentions to the flying creature. Now he pointed to the left, across the storm-tossed surface of the sea.

"Another longship!" Alicia cried, feeling a momentary delight. "Friends?" A ship emerged from the haze, rising and falling across the rolling swells. Its red sail, emblazoned with the dark image of a great bird of prey, swelled in the wind.

"Not likely," Brandon replied, quashing her hopes after a quick glance. "I don't know that black eagle sigil, and I know who my friends are."

But they couldn't afford to spend time in deliberation. The other ship, tacking against the wind, was still several miles away as the flying monster skimmed at them from the starboard beam, racing just below the pressing blanket of cloud. They could see no sign that it had been injured by the attack. Indeed, the creature uttered a bellow of rage that seemed to indicate it attacked with more fury than ever.

"Archers ready!" cried the prince as the beast nosed into a shallow dive.

Alicia clenched her sword, and much to her surprise realized that her other hand grasped Keane's arm quite firmly. Embarrassed, she released him, knowing that their only real hope of besting the creature rested with him.

The dragon seemed to sense this, too, for it dove directly toward the magic-user. The monster's red, glowing eyes, floating like amorphous spots in its great vacant sockets, sought out and locked onto Keane.

"Bulterus!"

The man spat another spell, this one a hissing bolt of lightning that crackled upward straight into the face of the monster. Like the force he had unleashed against the iron golem, the blast of electricity smashed into the serpent and filled the air with the sizzling odor of its force.

The dragon shrieked and veered, knocked from the path of its dive by the explosion. But this time it did not soar away over the wavetops. Instead, the monster crashed into the bow of the Gullwing, cracking away the figurehead and rocking the vessel crazily in the rough water. The beast perched at the prow of the ship, its hindquarters balanced on the hull while its tail dragged in the water.

"Attack!" shouted Brandon, seizing his great war hammer and charging toward the bow. Alicia ran at his side, so propelled by the mighty cadence of Tavish's song that she forgot the fear that would normally have locked her, or indeed any other person, in place.

The dragon's neck darted forward, and a seaman screamed as the awful jaws closed over his head and torso. When the monster reared, it left only the wretch's legs spurting blood from the severed midsection. A savage, taloned forefoot raked, ripping the faces from two more northmen.

Yak and Beaknod attacked. The firbolg chieftain wore, as always, his displacer beast cape, but now the grinning cat's skull rested on his head, snarling in hatred at the dracolich. Driving his stout club against the monster's shoulder, the firbolg struck with bone-crushing force.

Beaknod drove at the beast's other side, the huge giant-kin bellowing a battle cry. Gotha met the firbolg with a slash of his claws that sent the giant stumbling backward. Then the awful mouth struck down and daggerlike teeth closed over Beaknod's shoulders and head. With a strangled cry, the giant twisted reflexively and then drooped, dead.

The beast cast the body aside as Brandon's hammer crashed onto a monstrous foot, and Alicia drove her blade into the tendons of its leg. Screaming in pain, the dracolich reared back, the force of its motion carrying the splintering bow of the longship deeper into the rolling sea. Huge jaws gaping, the creature belched another cloud of smoke, and then Alicia felt the impending heat of its fiery breath.

In that instant, she lost hope of living and became a whirlwind of battle. She chopped with all her might, hacking deep into the decayed flesh of the monster's thigh. At the same time, she saw that horrible fireball emerge and shouted her disdain at the beast even as she thought that she died.

But Keane stood beside her, and he brandished his fist upward at the beast, while with his other hand, he pulled Alicia back into the ship. Brandon fought next to the mage, his hammer clenched in his hands, his face glaring upward in mute frustration as the inferno rained down.

Something, however, held the deadly force at bay.

For a moment, Alicia couldn't believe that she still lived. Hellish flame surged around her. She saw the bow of the Gullwing engulfed in fire as the orange blossom of death filled the air. Yet she and the men who were near her remained safe, as if wrapped in a blanket of protective air.

"The ring!" Keane shouted, exultant, and she knew that he was as surprised as she by their survival.

Indeed, as she looked at the hand where he wore the plain bronze ring from the tomb of Cymrych Hugh, she saw that the artifact glowed brightly. Lines of brightness swirled outward from the ring, forming a spherical cocoon around the half-dozen or so humans who survived in the bow of the ship.

For a moment, the battle paused as the dragon started back, astonished at the ineffectiveness of its deadliest attack. The humans, though equally shocked, recovered first.

"Die, wyrm!" shouted Brandon, his voice rich with savagery. He sprang to a bench and swung his hammer over his head. The heavy maul crashed into the monster's breast with a splintering of bone. Alicia leaped to his side and sank her own blade to the hilt into the monster's rotted flesh.

The serpent bellowed again, a gout of flame blossoming into the air over their heads. Above, the sail, still furled atop the mast, burst into flames, and the greedy tongues of fire licked their way down the long shaft of timber.

Sailors screamed and groaned behind Alicia, and she knew that not all of the crew had benefitted from the protection of Keane's ring. Again she stabbed the creature.

A claw reached toward her and she stumbled, falling as the vicious talons barely missed her head. The sinews in his back taut with effort, Brandon bashed his hammer onto the foot of the beast, and the snapping of bone cracked through the ship. The dragon howled again, and its jaws darted toward the northman prince.

Alicia screamed in terror, remembering the sailor who had perished so brutally at the outset of the fight. She struggled to rise, but splintered boards and broken bodies lay around her, trapping her where she was. Instead, it was Keane who leaped forward to the northman's side. This time the mage raised both his hands in the air and shouted something that sounded to the princess like an oath.

Before his upraised hands, a shimmering wall appeared in the air, like a slightly imperfect pane of glass that had been cast across the vessel's bow, separating the crew from the monstrous attacker. The dragon's snout crashed into the barrier, and the beast toppled back, howling in surprise. The noise of its cries shook the ocean, drowning out even the eternal crashing of the waves.

The serpent sprang again at the wall of force, only to bounce back with more shrill cries of outrage. It smashed with its unbroken forefoot, and that, too, was deflected.

"Back!" shouted Keane, grabbing Brandon's arm as Alicia struggled to her feet. "Back to the center of the ship, before the beast comprehends the spell!"

Alicia saw what he meant. The shimmering wall extended only a short distance overhead and was barely wider than the hull of the Gullwing. Soon the monster must realize that it could easily go around or over it. Indeed, the dragon suddenly lunged upward, pausing to hover over the bow of the stricken vessel while its glowing eyes sought a target.

She risked a glimpse to the side and saw that the other longship had raced much closer. Armed men stood along the hull, and the vessel had begun a wide turn that would run her alongside the stricken Gullwing.

Again the fiery breath erupted as the beast spewed its hell-fire over the top of the invisible wall. The spume, crackling and hissing in its hunger to devour flesh and wood, spilled downward and quickly blossomed into a great cloud.

But once more Keane raised his fist, and the ring met the fireball with its own irresistible force, glowing like a tiny sun, casting warmth into the face of inferno and somehow holding the maelstrom away. The dragonbreath was deflected over each side of the Gullwing, hissing like a mass of burning oil as it spread across the stormy waters.

"Keer-heesh!"

Keane shouted, and this time a web of blue sparks blossomed into the air, expanding like a whirling spiderweb of light. The net flew toward the dragon, and the great creature bellowed in frustration. Finally, with a lash of its tail that caved in several planks along the longship's bow, the serpent surged up into the air. The crackling web of sparks sailed after it, until both the dragon and the arcane force that pursued it disappeared into the low overcast.

"Alert-to port!" cried Knaff, and the crew immediately turned to confront the other longship. The hawk-winged sail loomed close as the vessel carved through a tight turn and commenced the last leg of its tack, a course that would take it straight into the Gullwing's shattered prow!

A moment after the alarm, a volley of arrows arced toward the Gullwing, striking several men of Gnarhelm. Shouts of war rang from the dark-sailed ship. Though the crew were obviously northmen, their intentions couldn't have been more clearly warlike.

"By the Abyss!" cursed Keane. "This is enough!" His face twisted in fury, the mage barged past the astonished Alicia and leaped onto the rail of the wallowing Gullwing. The enemy vessel, the Vulture, slipped past them two hundred feet away, and the princess caught a glimpse of a huge, one-eyed helmsman leering at his foes in triumph.

Keane pointed a long, steady finger at the center of the mysterious vessel's hull. His eyes narrowed into staring points of anger. "Dissidius!" he cried, barking a single word. The force of his magic wasn't visible, but Alicia sensed a pulsing in the air as a great force reached for the enemy's hull, seeking to rend the beams and nails into splinters.

But then Keane cursed. The princess felt the pulsation of magic rebound from the target, as if the longship was protected by some sort of proof against sorcery. The mage fell into the hull of the Gullwing and lay still.

"Keane!" Alicia cried, quickly kneeling beside him.

"Port helm! Hard!" Brandon shouted.

Knaff leaned against the rudder, and the stricken longship slowly veered, finally facing the oncoming vessel head-on.

"Hold on!" bellowed the prince, then ignored his own advice by raising his axe and charging toward the bow of the Gullwing. Yak, Wultha, and a dozen of his crew followed.

The collision wracked both ships with splintering violence. The sturdy Gullwing, despite her damage, wallowed with her bow only slightly lower in the water. The attacking Vulture, however, reeled to the side as several planks broke away from the weatherbeaten hull. The two bows snagged together for a moment, and Brandon led the charge across the pitching, splintered boards. The Prince of Gnarhelm leaped into the midst of his enemies, slashing with his huge axe. Yak waded into the fray behind him, picking up his human foes and throwing them over the side.

Alicia rolled forward from the force of the impact, slamming into an oarsman's bench. Cursing, she sat up and saw that Keane's eyes had opened. The mage blinked, squinting in pain.

"Wait here," the princess told him, relieved beyond words to see that he lived. At the same time, she knew that a battle for the survival of their ship raged only a few yards away.

But when she reached the bow, she saw that the two ships had drifted apart. Brandon, Yak, and Wultha battled furiously in the stricken, hawk-sailed ship, the bodies of a score of their foes lying around them. The mysterious ship foundered as gray water poured through the wounds in her hull.

"Ropes!" cried Alicia, and several northmen raced to obey. "Brandon! Over here!" she shouted as lines were pitched into the water. "Jump!"

Without hesitation, their three compatriots hurled themselves into the tossing sea, desperately grasping the ropes that trailed before them. In moments, they were hauled, sputtering and chilled, into the Gullwing. At the same time, the black-sailed Vulture slowly rolled onto her side and then vanished, along with her crew, beneath the waves.

For a moment, the crew of the Gullwing stood rapt, as if the sea itself had gone silent around them. Eyes searched the mist and the clouds, expecting the horrors to return any instant… but the sky remained still.

Not so the sea.

"Bail!" cried Brandon as great spurts of foaming sea burst through the cracked planking of the bow. His crew leaped to their buckets, while others returned to their oars. Alicia, Keane, and Brandon kept alert for a return of the monster from the skies, but it didn't reappear.

"You-you scared the dragon away," the princess said to Keane in amazement.

"The monster will be back sooner or later," the mage assured her. "As to the loss of that ship, it is a matter of sadness. I'm certain those men were just the pawns of the power that seeks to send us to war."

"My friends, the wizard and the princess," said Brandon, coming up to them with a weary smile. "We would all be dead now if not for you," he told Keane. "And for this, you shall always have the gratitude of me and my people. And you, dear princess-you fight like a dervish! I'm more glad than ever that we battle as allies and not foes."

Alicia shook her head, disparaging the comment. In her mind, she thought of the blows delivered by Brandon, the sorcery wielded by Keane, and even the benign magic of Tavish. Her contribution seemed paltry indeed.

Water splashed around their ankles. The Gullwing foundered, and they all wondered if they would be here to greet the monster upon its return.

For Gwyeth of Blackstone, the dawn was shattered by the screams of twoscore of his men as the wretches awakened trapped within a twisted mat of creepers and vines, plants that had sprouted during the night to entangle the unfortunate warriors who slumbered in their path. Howling, they struggled to escape, but all of them remained pinned to the ground by their arms, legs, necks, and torsos. Unhurt but terrified, they pleaded for help from their comrades.

The rest of the troop set upon the thicket with knives and shortswords, chopping and hacking at the verdant bonds imprisoning their compatriots. Soon they freed all the trapped men, though several had suffered nicks and cuts from blades wielded by their overzealous comrades.

Morale had reached a nadir as the men started up the last few miles of the trail to the Moonwell. Gwyeth, in the lead, mounted upon his charger, was in as bad a humor as the troops of his company. Pryat Wentfeld rode well behind the knight as the armored man muttered and cursed his way up the rock-strewn mountain track. But the entanglement, it seemed, was the last obstacle in their path. Less than two hours later, the mounted knight saw the tops of the tall cedars waving in the breeze. Shortly afterward, the pond came into view.

A hundred Ffolk or more, raggedly dressed and unarmed, scattered from the path of Gwyeth's column as he led them into the vale. The knight dismounted as they drew near the pool, and he made a point of ignoring the rabble that had ceased its flight at a respectful distance.

"There, lord. That's the one we dropped," explained Backar, indicating a great cedar trunk stretched along the ground. "You see the stump, right th-"

The man's voice trailed off in shock. Gwyeth, too, stared in disbelief. The tree, he could see, had obviously been felled recently. Its needles were still green, and moist pine sap gummed on the exposed end.

Yet the stump could not be seen. Where it should have been, another great cedar grew into the sky, nearly equalling the others in its lofty height.

"I swear, Sir Gwyeth!" Backar was nearly blubbering in confusion and chagrin. "There! Where that tree grows! Two days ago we left it a ragged stump!"

"Never mind!" snapped the knight, angrily scowling at the assembled peasants. "It's no more than I would have expected from this bespooked place. It makes it more important than ever to have done with the curse!"

Pryat Wentfeld had also dismounted. Quietly he performed another casting with the pinch of flour, the same he had used to examine the hallucinatory forest. This time the white powder flew away from him, dusting into the crowd of pilgrims to settle across the garments of one man-a man, the cleric noted, who seemed remarkably young and, though thin, possessed of a wiry strength that belied his appearance when compared to the ragged lot around him.

"There!" hissed the priest, pointing at the marked man, who had begun to sidle away. " That is your druid!"

"Seize him!" cried Gwyeth, who would have chased the varlet himself, except that his heavy plate mail practically immobilized him. "Bring him to me!"

The thin bearded man identified by the cleric turned and sprinted away, but a dozen men-at-arms, led by Backar, quickly overhauled and tackled him. They dragged him back to Gwyeth as they bound his hands behind his back.

"So you're the charlatan who pretends to practice the arts of druidhood!" the knight said, sneering. The man remained silent. Looking more closely, Gwyeth saw a hard determination in the druid's green eyes. His insolence annoyed the knight, who cuffed the prisoner across the face.

"The goddess shall prevail," hissed the druid, spitting out a broken tooth. "It's too late for you to stop her!"

"Silence, knave!" Gwyeth slapped him again before he could speak more of his treasonous drivel. The knight saw that already some of the more superstitious men looked at the prisoner with expressions of wonder, even awe. He knew he had to put a stop to this, and he drew his dagger, ready to slit the man's throat without further ceremony.

"My lord," said the cleric, anticipating his act. "Perhaps the deed would be better done with formality-an example lest anyone else presume to impersonate a member of that forgotten order."

"What do you suggest?" Clenching his dagger, Gwyeth held his blow long enough to listen.

"You say you shall burn the brush after you fell the trees. Why not affix yon charlatan to a stake in the midst of that fire? Such a death would be only suitable for this murderer, and the spectacle would also make a far better tale than to hear of him slain by your dagger while bound before you."

The image of the druid burning at the stake flamed in Gwyeth's imagination. The cleric was right.

"Very well. Detail six men to guard him," he told Backar. "Bind his feet and gag his mouth as well. He shall die by fire before this day is out."

Quickly he instructed fifty of his men to scatter the crowd of pilgrims who had sullenly watched this proceeding. The men-at-arms went about their task with relish, using clubs and the flats of their swords. The last of the ragged onlookers soon fled for the safety of the high rocks around the vale, where they looked down with unconcealed dismay.

The rest of Gwyeth's men hefted axes even before the pilgrims had been driven away. They started toward the grove of cedars, and soon the ringing of twoscore axemen sounded a cadence of death in the valley of the Moonwell.

Orange flames crackled upward from the weatherbeaten barn. The pyre marked the destruction of a season's precious straw and grain and the livestock that would have survived on the fodder. The farmer and his family had been butchered in the yard as the five pitiful figures had tried to defend their home from twenty-five mounted, armored knights.

"Valiant but stupid," Larth announced as his own black charger reared back, kicking anxiously at the flames. With the remark, the brigand dismissed the lives and deaths and all the hopes and aspirations of his victims. It was a mental tactic he had begun to use with increasing frequency as his reign of terror swept along the coast of Gnarhelm.

The thickset knight preferred not to remember the details of faces and forms that marked the bodies in his wake. By all measures except the nagging voice of his conscience, the mission had been exceptionally successful. He had lost only five of his riders, and the survivors had claimed enough treasure to make them all rich men.

The losses had come during a skirmish with hundreds of northern axemen, led by the King of Olafstaad. The armored knights, all mounted, fought the northmen on a grassy moor, and the horses had inflicted horrible losses on the footmen.

Larth's charger reared back suddenly, and the knight gaped in astonishment at the man who had abruptly materialized there.

"You!" he gulped, steadying his prancing mount.

"You have served me well," said the hooded priest. "Now I bring further instructions."

"I remain yours to command," Larth pledged as cold terror gripped his gut.

"You must ride with all haste into the Fairheight Mountains, to the Moonwell near Cantrev Blackstone."

"Why?" the knight had the audacity to ask.

"This entire island will explode in chaos if we can but maintain the pressure. Talos and his faithful will be richly rewarded! But there is a threat to his might found in this Moonwell. I need you there. My auguries show me that there is where the issue will be decided!"

"We ride with all haste," promised the warrior as his men gathered silently around them. The burning farm hissed as rain fell into the flames, but the dried wood crackled and burned as hot as ever.

"See that you make no delay," the cleric commanded. "I need you there in two days." As quickly as he had appeared, the robed figure vanished.

Larth and his warriors disappeared as well, swallowed by the dark, wet night as they rode away from the fire.

Danrak watched the preparations of Gwyeth's men in mute despair. His arms ached, bent as they were around the stake driven into the ground behind him. The dirty gag nearly choked him, but the cleric had ordered his eyes unmasked, doubtlessly so that the helpless druid could observe the destruction being wrought on the valley of the Moonwell.

Eight men stood near Danrak with swords drawn. They were taut as bowstrings, as if they expected him at any moment to turn into a viper and slither away. Now he was as helpless as any prisoner could be. He watched as cedar after towering cedar slowly gave way to the axes, each seeming to shriek in protest as it toppled in doomed majesty, then slammed into the ground with earthshaking force.

Other men hacked with their swords-they had neglected to bring sickles-at the berry bushes and the roses and other flowers that had blossomed throughout the vale. The brush they piled around Danrak, and the druid felt a bitter irony as the fragrance of the aromatic buds wafted around him, marking the impotence of his last moments on earth.

After a few hours of work, the once beautiful place already resembled a wasteland. The men cleared the near shore of the well first, and then slowly began to work their way around the pond. They reached the halfway point on either side, and the circle of destruction slowly started to close.

Danrak wanted to close his eyes, to shut out the images of disaster, but his mind compelled him to watch. Despair grew to a raging storm within him, but he could do nothing.

A sudden sound pulled his head around. He saw a flash of blue and thought at first that a bluebird had flickered past, further mockery of his plight. Then he saw the movement again and realized that it was larger than a bluebird, though the thing now fluttered before him on wings as faerielike as any butterfly's.

The watchmen beside the druid stumbled backward, shouting in alarm. The strange creature, who looked something like a flying lizard with a wide, toothy grin, seemed to smile at Danrak.

"Hi," said the serpent. "I'm Newt. What are you doing tied to that pole?" Danrak gaped in astonishment, but before he could make a sound, the creature had disappeared.

The night lay thick across the isles, but nowhere was the cloak of darkness more dense than over Caer Callidyrr itself. Here the High Queen Robyn slumbered in her unknowing, deathlike trance, bound by the power of chaotic Talos. And here the Princess Deirdre awaited the summons to the greatest challenge of her young life.

She lay awake, tossing on her bed, until finally she rose and went to her high window. Casting open the shutters, she looked across a world of ultimate, desolate blackness. The aperture faced away from the town, so she saw only the occasional torches of watchmen or hearthfires glowing in some distant herdsmen's huts.

The sky above remained thick and impenetrable, clouds masking the moon, which, unknown to her, rose before sunset, only a day away from the fullness of its cycle.

Then she felt a tremor in the air, and she stepped back from her window, catching her breath and hoping it was him! Malawar came into her room, and for the first time, he swept her into his arms. She felt a fierce, exultant joy as he kissed her.

"Now," Malawar murmured, his voice a soft music in Deirdre's ear. "The oath. It is time for you to pledge."

"The oath to Talos," she replied, softly and unsurprised. "I could feel that the time was coming. The power has been growing rapidly within me. Day by day I feel its intensification."

"Good-very good."

Malawar's smile was dazzling, and his hair gleamed like spun gold as he removed a wax figure from a pouch of his voluminous robe. From another place, he pulled a small, tightly rolled parchment.

He touched a finger to the wax figure, which bore a crude resemblance to a maiden-it might have been Deirdre. The image burst into flame, and he unrolled the scroll and gave it to the princess to hold.

"Read the words," he instructed, "while holding it over the flame. As the fire consumes the vellum, the power of Talos shall flow into your veins."

The sigils on the sheet were strange to Deirdre, but as she stared at them, the fire making the material glow in her hands, they began to form themselves into sounds. They were strange noises, things not intended to issue from any human throat, but somehow they came to her naturally, brimming with a deep, guttural joy. As she made the sounds, the vellum grew hotter and hotter in her hands. When she reached the final sound, the sheet popped brightly, disappearing except for a trace of perfumed smoke that hovered in the air between her hands. The wax figure, she saw, had burned to a pool.

For a moment, time froze. The princess felt a heightened awareness, as if she could feel the blood pulsing in her veins, the guards patrolling the castle walls beyond-even the moisture, slowing gathering into rain, that lurked in the clouds overhead. She saw Malawar's smile, and her joy expanded to impossible heights.

Deirdre barely noticed when Malawar picked her up and carried her to the bed.

"What purpose do you take me to, Warlock?" asked Hanrald, wishing that the great hound could talk. The powerful animal had always led the Blackstone pack, and even now, among the fifty or so dogs that escorted Hanrald, he stood out as alert, quick, and cautious. For the most part, the moorhound led his pack across the highland plateau at an amble, tongue lolling, gait steady. The knight had labored to keep up for all of this long day.

Suddenly Hanrald paused and held up his hand. As if sensing his purpose, the moorhounds stopped panting so that they, too, could listen.

"Chopping-that's the sound of someone chopping wood!" declared the knight, delighted with the discovery. "That means there's people up there-people with food and drink and perhaps a horse that could get me back to Blackstone!" He started forward at a lumbering trot.

But as he came to the high bluff that overlooked the activity, he realized that he was wrong. He recognized the place immediately as the Blackstone Moonwell, and for the first time in days, he knew where he was. He remembered all the details of the miracle Alicia had described and knew that Gwyeth had done his work well.

Hanrald saw a man tied to a great stake driven into the earth. The brush and tree limbs stacked about his feet left no doubt as to his sentence.

Beside him, Warlock growled, his hackles raised, and suddenly Hanrald's task gleamed in front of the knight like a holy beacon: The hounds had brought him here so that he could stop this desecration.

Ignoring caution, Hanrald started to pick his way down the steep slope leading toward the pond. He saw a great stack of cedar trunks and the stumps where they had grown only hours before.

Alicia! In his mind, he pictured her, and he knew that she had performed a miracle here. Hanrald vowed his life to the preservation of that miracle, and he would fight in the name of his princess.

The knight saw the pilgrims who had been driven from the well. They squatted here, high on the rocky slope, and studied Hanrald with mute suspicion. Soon the clanking noise of his passage-he still wore his plate mail, though he had discarded his helmet-attracted the attention of the men in the valley. Some of them gathered in a semicircle to greet him as he reached the bottom of the bluff, though they regarded him suspiciously, with upraised axes. A circle of hounds gathered around the knight, growling and holding the men-at-arms away.

A helmeted warrior, clad in armor similar to Hanrald's, approached. Hanrald recognized his brother Gwyeth.

"What are you doing here?" demanded the latter as his men opened their ring to their leader. Gwyeth stopped twenty feet from Hanrald and scowled through his opened visor, planting his hands firmly on his hips.

"I come to send you away," Hanrald retorted, "and to let nature take the course that she will."

Gwyeth laughed sharply. "You would disobey our father?"

"Only because he-and you-show treason to our king!"

The older man glowered even more darkly. The men-at-arms looked among themselves-treason to the High Crown was not something lightly contemplated or loosely charged.

"It's fit that we find you in the company of curs. You're a lying dog and a disgrace to the family!" snarled Gwyeth, his hands on the hilt of his broadsword.

"A family I would as soon be rid of," retorted Hanrald, his voice calm but his own hands ready to loose his weapon. "For it has lost all sense of honor in its undying quest for gold!"

Warlock growled and stepped before the knight, but Hanrald called him back. "This battle is mine, friend."

Gwyeth, however, stared at the dog. "That's Warlock!" he exclaimed. "The dog who fled the manor on the night of Currag's death! And these others-all the hounds of Blackstone!"

"Aye, Brother, and they are here because of the offense you give to the earth!"

"Enough!" Gwyeth's rage took hold of him, and his sword burst from its scabbard to gleam in his hands. "Steel can silence your treasonous tongue."

Hanrald barely had time to draw his own weapon and meet his brother's assault with a clash of sharp steel. The two knights bashed at each other again, then circled warily. Once more they closed in, exchanging blows from the right and left, high and low, but each time one sword met the other, and the ringing notes of the conflict echoed through the vale.

Some of the men-at-arms fidgeted with their own weapons, as if they would help their lord, but they found themselves confronted by slavering hounds, baring white fangs and standing in stiff-backed, bristling readiness.

The two knights chopped and parried, asking and giving no quarter. Their blades cut silvery arcs through the air, and the momentum of their attacks slowly carried them down the gentle slope toward the shore of the pool. The man tied to the stake watched them impassively, as did the ragged pilgrims around the fringe of the vale, while the men-at-arms stayed well back from the menacing hounds.

One man, however, did more than watch. Unseen by either of the combatants, Pryat Wentfeld, devout cleric of Helm, slowly withdrew something from his pouch. Carefully, surreptitiously, he prepared to cast a spell.

Musings of the Harpist

She is here, and alive, though just barely. I have seen an essence in my dreams these past nights, and I curse my old brain that it did not understand more quickly. But now I am certain.

The Earthmother has returned. A glimmering of her might was born in the Fairheight Moonwell, and now that fragment struggles for life, as a sapling struggles to raise its leaves to the sun.

She has floated through a long night, and her awakening is not yet assured. It remains to us to give her that chance.