Straken

Twenty–One

Dawn was a faint glimmer in the east when Penderrin Ohmsford stirred from his sleep and peered from his shelter into the gray, hazy gloom of a new day. Mist clung to the land in deep pockets. Clouds obscured the sky, thick and dull blankets that formed a canopy from horizon to horizon and refused to reveal the sun. The air was windless and raw with unpleasant smells and the landscape wintry and bleak in the pale first light. The night’s rain had ended, leaving dark stains on the bare earth and rocks.

The dragon was right where it had been the night before, stretched in front of his shelter like a wall. Only now, it was sleeping.

Pen stared at it for a moment, not quite believing. Yes, the dragon was asleep, its eyelids closed, its huge, horn–encrusted snout resting comfortably on its wagon–wheel feet, a steady snoring issuing from its maw, and its nostrils flaring at regular intervals as it inhaled and exhaled.

He waited long moments to be certain, then carefully climbed to his feet, his cloak wrapped close and the darkwand gripped firmly in one hand. A corridor opened to his left, leading just past the dragon’s outstretched head, passing wickedly close to those teeth and claws but offering a narrow avenue of escape. He just needed to be very quiet. And lucky.

He took a deep breath and stepped from his shelter into the thin dawn light.

Instantly, one scaly lid slipped open and the dragon’s yellow eye stared at him.

He froze, his blood gone cold, waiting to see if maybe, just possibly, the eye might not register his presence and simply close again. But it fixed firmly on him and did not move. He watched it for long moments, debating if he should try to go farther, then backed slowly into his shelter and sat down again.

So much for that.

He sat looking out at the dragon for a long time. He was so hungry he could hear his stomach growl. His nerves were ragged, and his hopes for reaching his aunt fading fast. Somehow, he had to get past the monster. To spend another day trapped in those rocks was unacceptable.

He closed his eyes in despair. Didn’t the dragon ever get hungry? Why didn’t it leave and go off to find something to eat?

Of course, dragons might not have to eat all that often, he reasoned. Maybe they only ate once a week, like the moor cats in the Four Lands. Maybe it had just eaten before it found him. Maybe it would never want to eat anything again as long as it had him to entertain it.

« Get out of here!» he screamed in a rush of frustration.

The dragon didn’t move. It didn’t even blink.

But the runes on the darkwand began to dance wildly.

He stared at them in confusion and surprise. The dancing continued for a few seconds more, and then slowed. He furrowed his brow. His voice had disturbed them. They had become more active because he had shouted at the dragon.

He found himself thinking again about how the runes continued to glow even while he was asleep and paying no attention to the staff at all. He had thought at first that the runes only brightened when they were responding to his thoughts. But that didn’t seem to be the case. Hadn’t been the case ever. From the moment he had encountered the dragon, the runes had acted independently of anything he had done, keeping the monster transfixed and at bay.

Even while he was sleeping.

Why would they do that?

They would do it, he thought suddenly, because the darkwand was sentient. The tanequil had given him a living piece of itself. That was what had enabled him to carve the runes without seeing what he was doing. That was what had transported him from the Four Lands into the Forbidding. It knew to use the runes to charm the dragon, to mesmerize it so that it would not attack Pen. Just as it knew to guide him to the Ard Rhys, it knew to protect him.

But why had the runes responded to his voice?

Shades!

Because it was a thing of magic and it would always respond to other magic. His magic. Not his little magic, his ability to read the actions and behavior of other creatures in an effort to communicate with them. Not the magic he had grown up with and kept secret even from his parents because he never thought it mattered. No, not that magic.

Another magic. The wishsong magic.

Like father, like son.

He could scarcely believe it. He had always understood there was a possibility of his inheriting such magic. But he had thought that possibility long past, faded with the passing of the years. He was too old. If it was going to happen, it would have happened earlier.

Yet it hadn’t happened to his father, either, until he was a few years older than Pen was now. So it was possible that history was repeating itself. The blood heritage was a part of his past. But perhaps it was also a part of his future, its seeds locked deep inside him. He knew that his small communicative magic was born of it, even if it wasn’t as powerful.

And now, for reasons he didn’t understand, the wishsong had surfaced in him as it had surfaced twenty years earlier in his father. It had awakened in his voice and given him a way to connect to the magic of the darkwand.

Except, he thought excitedly, hedid understand the reasons for its emergence. The darkwand had awakened the wishsong. His joining to the staff in the carving of its intricate web of runes had brought the magic to life.

He looked into the distance, thinking that he was being foolish, that he had no reason to believe any of his conclusions. He glanced down at the staff, at the softly glowing runes, their patterns changing endlessly, dancing hypnotically across the darkened, burnished wood. He had no proof that the wishsong’s magic was what had stirred those runes or, even if it had, that he could implement it in any useful way.

But where was the harm in trying to find out?

He began to hum, soft and steady, shifting tones and pitches, trying anything and everything. He kept at it, not knowing exactly what he was doing, just testing to see if anything he tried would make a difference. The response from the runes was immediate. They throbbed and pulsed, the glow shifting from rune to rune and from row to row, skipping here and there as if a thing alive. Patterns formed and were replaced almost quicker than the eye could follow, a kaleidoscope of brilliant images.

The dragon lifted its head, fascinated.

Pen changed from humming to stringing together words, not singing any specific song, just phrases that seemed to go together, seeking ways to make the runes do other things. But the runes just kept shifting about as they chose with little regard to anything he did. They seemed to respond only to sound and not to specific words or meanings. Frustrated, unable to see how this was helping anything, he tightened his resolve, burrowed down inside himself, and gave a harder push to what he was doing.

Get away from me,he sang in a dozen different ways.Go far, jar away from me.

Suddenly, there was a different response from the staff. Imprints of the runes literally jumped off the wood and into the air, glowing images that hung like fireflies against the sullen morning light. Still throbbing and pulsing, still shifting about in intricate patterns that kept the dragon mesmerized, the rune images danced about and then flew off into the morning mist. Line after line of glowing symbols broke free of the darkwand and winged away like birds taking flight.

The dragon sniffed at them as they passed, and then licked out at them with its long, mottled tongue, but it could not capture them. Frustrated, it heaved its bulk off the ground and rose on its hind legs, maw splitting wide, scaly lips drawing back to reveal blackened teeth. Hissing and spitting, it snapped wildly at the images as they flitted past. Pen shrank back against the rock of his shelter in terror, but managed to keep singing. The dragon ripped at the images with its forelegs, and then finally, screaming with frustration as they continued to elude it, it spread great leathery wings and took flight, chasing after them.

It happened so fast that Pen barely had time to register his sudden change of fortune before the dragon was gone, a dark speck in the distance, pursuing the still–glowing images. Seconds later, it disappeared completely.

Pen kept singing anyway, sending more flights of glowing runes in the same direction, worried that the dragon would decide to come back. When he finally thought it safe, he went silent. The images faded and the runes on the staff ceased their excited dance and resumed a soft, gentle pulsing against the dark surface of the wood. All about, silence hung deep and pervasive on the hazy morning air.

Pen exhaled sharply. What in the world had happened?

The truth was, he didn’t know. Obviously he had tapped into the magic of the wishsong, successfully summoning it from where it lay dormant within him. Probably his link with the darkwand enabled him to do so, to bring the magic to life and to make use of it to save himself. But he had no idea what sort of magic he had conjured. He didn’t know how to control it, he didn’t really even understand how to use it. All he had managed to do was to make the darkwand’s runes respond to him in a way that had lured the dragon away and given him a chance to be free. Beyond that, he hadn’t learned a thing.

But that was good enough.

Wrapping his cloak close about him once more and gripping the darkwand firmly in one hand, he stepped out of his shelter and looked about. There was no sign of the dragon or anything else. The day was sullen and dark, and the air smelled of damp and rot. He needed to get out of that place, he needed to find Grianne Ohmsford and go home again.

Turning his thoughts to his aunt and mindful of how he had begun his search two days before, he held up the staff, pointed it south again, and watched the runes brighten.

Then, with a last cautious look skyward, he set out.

He walked all the rest of that day through country so bleak and so heavy with the promise of evil that he found himself constantly looking over his shoulder for what he imagined might be following. He took the trail leading up into the mountains, the passage he had chosen before the dragon trapped him, climbing steadily into the rocks through the morning, and then descending on the other side in the afternoon. The day stayed dreary, the mountain air of no better quality than what he had found below. The haziness of the landscape was deep and pervasive. Not much grew anywhere he passed through. Mostly, the terrain was marked by different striations of earth and rock, a blending of washed–out grays and blacks and browns.

It rained a little at midday. He cupped his hands to catch the precious liquid and licked the dampness from his palms. Other than that, he found only stagnant ponds and sediment–fouled trickles coming out of the rocks. Higher up, he encountered trees that bore a vivid crimson fruit, but he knew that bright colors in living things frequently indicated danger, and he passed the fruit by. He found a flock of crowlike birds eating berries from a bush, and though the berries looked unpleasant, he tried one anyway and found it edible. With an eye toward the crow–birds, which were squawking at him angrily, he ate the rest.

Weary from his ordeal of the past few days, drained of energy in a way he had not expected, he rested at the crest of the pass for a time before starting down. Some of that had to do with the stress and fear that his encounter with the dragon had created, but some had to do with his not eating or sleeping well. The land had a draining effect on him, its blasted, empty terrain unbearably depressing. How anything could live in that world escaped him. He guessed that what lived there was a match for the land. Certainly the dragon was. He found himself hoping that the dragon was the most dangerous creature he would come across, but what were the chances of that?

After his rest, he descended the far side of the mountains, following the long, winding thread of the pass toward a vast misted plain that stretched away as far as the eye could see. The plain looked devoid of life, but he knew better than to expect that it was. Mist clung to its surface, twisting and writhing through deep ravines and skirting broad plateaus that lifted out of the flats like beasts rising from sleep. Skeletal trees jutted from the plains like bones, and here and there black pools of water shimmered slickly.

He looked out across the plains in despair. Crossing those flats was not something he wanted to do.

But what choice did he have?

He had no idea how far he would have to travel to reach his aunt or what he would find when he did. She had been there a long time by then, anything could have happened to her. He took it on faith that she was still alive. He did not think the runes would direct him to her lifeless body. But she could be hurt or damaged mentally or emotionally. She could have been made a captive or forced to endure any number of other unpleasant things. If she required physical assistance to get back to the doorway of the Forbidding, how was he going to manage that? If she required medical help, what could he do to heal her? The more he thought about it, the more daunting the prospects seemed. Too much time had passed for everything to be unchanged in her life. Something would be wrong with her, something would have happened.

He was not looking forward to finding out what that was.

He trudged on, reached the bottom of the pass, and struck out across the plains toward the heavily misted horizon. The darkwand was taking him south and east, turning him slightly from his previous path. The way forward was swathed in encroaching darkness that lifted out of the east like a shroud ready to be laid over a corpse. The land felt and looked like that corpse, and Pen supposed that it would be appropriate to lay a shroud over it. He did not care to be out and about when that happened, however, and he began to look for somewhere to spend the night. The clumps of rocks he had relied upon for protection and shelter the past few nights were missing here. All that was available were promontories, deep ravines, and stands of stunted trees. He chose the latter, thinking that if he could find a suitable clump in which to nest, he could conceal himself from whatever might come hunting by night.

For what must have been the hundredth time, he wished he knew more about the land and its inhabitants, knowledge that might help keep him safe. But there was nothing he could do about his ignorance, he was there, and the only person likely to give him any sort of useful information was the person he was searching for.

The light darkened from misty gray to deep twilight. A fog settled in, a thickening of the mist that slowly shortened visibility to a dozen yards. Pen had been making his way toward a particularly thick stand of broad–limbed trees with branches so thoroughly intertwined it was difficult to tell where one tree stopped and another began. The canopy of limbs provided a shelter that might hide him while he sought to gain a little sleep. He questioned whether he could sleep at all given his uneasiness after the dragon experience, but he knew he had to try.

He entered the woods just as darkness was closing down, found a stand of wintry, gray–barked hardwoods that were virtually bereft of leaves, and settled down in a patch of heavy, coarse grass nestled between a pair of ancient trunks. Wrapped in his cloak, he put his back against one of the trunks and watched the onset of night steal away the last of the light.

When everything turned black, he listened to the ensuing hush. When the hush gave way to night sounds, he sat listening to those. When the sounds grew closer, a mix of clicks and huffs and low growls, he pressed harder against the tree trunk and brought the darkwand around in front of him for whatever protection it might offer.

And then the sounds evened out and smoothed over, surrounding him but not coming so close that he felt the need to move, and his eyes began to grow heavy, his breathing to deepen and slow, and finally, he slept.

When he awoke, dawn had broken in a wash of familiar hazy gray light, and the surface of the surrounding land was covered in layers of vapor that ebbed and flowed across the contours of the terrain like an ocean’s waves across a rocky shore. He stared out into the all–but–invisible distance, to horizons that ended much nearer than they had the day before and revealed nothing of what they concealed, and he was immediately depressed.

He was hungry, as well, but there was nothing to eat or drink, or at least nothing on which he wished to take a chance. So he turned his efforts to stretching cramped limbs and aching muscles, to finding fresh ways to make the blood flow sufficiently that he could get to his feet and go on. He could barely tolerate the thought of it, his search beginning to take on the feel of an endless odyssey, one that might not have an attainable destination, but would simply lead him on until he was lost beyond recovery in a trackless wilderness.

He thought he might try to use his magic, to employ it to make contact with some of the vegetation or smaller creatures and see what he could learn. It was all well and good to give himself over to the directional dictates of the darkwand, but it would be better if he could feel that he had some small control over his own destiny. Just being able to know a little something more of the world through which he passed might help. He didn’t yet have much confidence in his ability to get out of tight spots, and knowing that his magic could do more than make the darkwand’s runes dance about would go a long ways toward changing that.

He rose finally and looked about, peering through the gloom, trying not to breathe in the fetid smells of the deadwood and dank earth. The sky was lower today, more heavily clouded, as if rain threatened, and the mix of clouds and mist gave the sense of a sky and earth become joined. The way forward seemed immeasurable, a thick wall of gray that lacked any sense of up or down or sideways. He peered into it with trepidation and repulsion, then reluctantly set out.

He walked for a time, but could not seem to get clear of the woods. He was certain they did not stretch far and that he had set out in the right direction. But trees continued to materialize through the wall of the mist, their tangled limbs linked weblike overhead.

Finally he stopped, directed his thoughts toward his aunt, and held out the staff.

Nothing.

At first, he couldn’t believe it. Then he panicked. Had the magic of the darkwand ceased to respond to him? He shook his head. No, that couldn’t be. He turned to his left and tried again. Still nothing. He wheeled back in the direction from which he had come and tried a third time. This time, the runes flashed brightly in response.

He had gotten turned completely around.

Still a little afraid and not wishing to chance getting lost again, he kept the staff raised and his thoughts fixed and began to retrace his steps. He moved ahead carefully, watching where he placed his feet, taking note of the location of the trees, trying to form some sense of direction, even as he relied on the darkwand’s magic to keep him from wandering astray.

When he stepped from the woods finally, clear at last, he found himself in a stretch of heavy grasses and rotting logs interspersed with stagnant, scum–laced ponds. The smell was terrible. He wrinkled his nose and glanced about apprehensively, took a quick reading from the staff, and moved ahead.

He had gone only a short distance when he saw the bones. Gray and bare and broken, they lay scattered on a patch of bare earth. He stopped at once and stared at them. He did not know what kind of bones they were, but there were enough of them that he could tell that they came from more than one creature. From the number and their condition, he guessed they had been there for a long time.

He was in the middle of a feeding ground.

He looked about once more, suddenly aware of how quiet it was.A good idea to move away from this place, he thought.

Sliding left through the grasses, away from the bones, he walked as silently as he could toward another sparse copse of dead trees, trying to breathe evenly, to keep his head clear and his thoughts collected. Don’tpanic, he told himself.Whateverfeeds here isn’t necessarily about.

A high–pitched shriek stopped him in his tracks. A second responded to the first, and a third. They came from all sides, piercing and raw. A huge shape descended from the gloom, wings outstretched as it settled onto the log not twenty feet ahead of him. It was a vulturelike bird, its body as big as his own, its wingspan at least a dozen feet. He watched it land, wings folding against its back, its narrow head lowering.

When the head lifted a moment later, he saw that the bird had the face of a woman. But not any kind of woman he had ever seen. This woman had sharp, bony features, its mouth jutting and pinched in the manner of a beak and its eyes hard and birdlike. Its body and wings were covered with dark feathers, and its feet ended in huge, hooked talons that seemed too big for the rest of it.

Hunched so far over that it looked deformed, it sat on the log and watched him intently but made no move toward him. He held his ground a moment, then started to back away. But another shriek rose, and a second bird–woman swooped down right behind him, blocking his way. Then two more appeared, and two more after that, materializing out of the haze, wings flapping as they landed all about him, some on the ground, some on the limbs of trees. A dozen, at least, he saw, all watching him, gazes hard and fixed.

Harpies.

He swallowed hard. He knew what Harpies were, he had read stories of them in his father’s histories of the Four Lands. Vicious and unpredictable creatures, Harpies had been exiled to the Forbidding along with the other dark things in the time of Faerie. If memory served him correctly, Harpies were flesh eaters that were said to have preyed on men and animals alike.

He glanced again at the talons of the one perched on the log in front of him and felt a fresh surge of panic. He needed to be somewhere else right away, but he didn’t know how he could manage that, encircled as he was. Some of them had started to edge closer, making small cooing sounds. They seemed pleased. They sounded eager.

« Get away!» he shouted at them, waving his arms threateningly.

Instantly, the runes on the darkwand flared, brightening like bits of fire, dancing up and down the wood. The Harpies shrieked and flapped their leathery wings, and those advancing paused. Pen shouted at them some more and tried to move through them, but they quickly adjusted to keep him in place. He swung the staff at them. The runes danced even more wildly. The Harpies flinched but held their ground.

Pen felt an overwhelming sense of desperation. He had to find something more effective. He remembered the dragon then and how his use of the wishsong had sent the runes flying off into the distance, luring it away. Perhaps that would work with the Harpies, as well. He didn’t have much control over how the magic worked, but it was all he could think of.

He began to sing boldly, as if he might force his way through his attackers by the sheer force of his voice. He sang snatches of phrases and bits and pieces of things that just came to him, hoping that something would work. It did. Rune images spun off the staff in a glowing swirl and soared skyward, forming bright, complex patterns against the dark ceiling of the clouds.

The Harpies watched as the images lifted into the sky but they did not follow.

Pen’s desperation increased. He didn’t know what more he could do. He kept singing, punctuating his increasingly frantic efforts with shouts and cries, looking for something that would drive the Harpies back. But, having seen that his magic was confined to pretty glowing images that danced and flew and did nothing more, the bird–women were advancing again. Their sharp eyes glittered in the dim light and their strange mouths worked slowly up and down, opening and closing hungrily.

Pen gripped the darkwand tightly in both hands and prepared to use it as a club. It was all he had left.

But just when it seemed that he was all out of chances, a dark shape appeared on the horizon, winging toward him, quickly growing larger and taking form. The dragon! It was tracking the rune images once more, following them to their source. How it had seen them from so far away, Pen couldn’t know. But it was flying right for where the greatest number circled and danced against the clouds overhead.

Their bright, hard eyes fixed on Pen, the Harpies didn’t see the dragon at first. Then the dragon screamed—there was no other word for it—and they swung about swiftly, necks craned, a fresh urgency in their posture. A few took flight immediately, but the rest hesitated, unwilling to abandon their prey.

Plummeting out of the sky with such swiftness that Pen, who had thought he might try to make a run for it, had no chance to do anything but stand and watch, the dragon dropped on them like a stone. It snatched up the Harpies the way a big cat might small birds, tearing them apart and casting them aside as fast as it could reach them. A few flew at the dragon with their wicked talons outstretched, but the beast simply crushed them in its huge jaws and flung them to the ground. The Harpies screamed and hissed and flapped their wings frantically, unable to escape.

One by one, the dragon killed them until only two were left, crawling about the blood–soaked earth and whimpering in despair. The dragon played with them, nudging them this way and that. Pen watched for as long as it took him to realize that he might be next, then slowly backed away. Rune images still danced and soared overhead, and fresh images leapt from the darkwand to whirl about the dragon like fireflies. If the dragon saw them, it gave no indication. For the moment, its attention was fixed on its new toys.

Pen reached the edge of the woods without the dragon taking notice and slipped into the trees. After he was well into them, he put the darkwand beneath his cloak, closed down his thoughts of his aunt, and waited for the runes to go dark.

Soaked in his own sweat, he pushed on, barely able to make himself move. He had thought the dragon safely gone. But it couldn’t have been far away if it had seen the rune images. That should have made him happy, since it had saved his life, but it only made him further aware of how vulnerable he was. He might be saved for the moment, but he would remain in peril until he was out of the Forbidding and back in the Four Lands. Until then, his life span probably didn’t measure the length of his arm. He had to find his aunt, and he had to find her quickly or his luck would be used up.

He kept walking, refusing to look back, heading in the general direction he knew he had to go. He kept the darkwand lowered and inactive, afraid to do anything that would bring the runes to life.

He was half a mile away before he could no longer hear the crunching of bones.