Saint Elm's Deep (The Legend of Vanx Malic) Read online

  Chelda might have argued with them but instead moved over to the fire and sat down cross-legged before Eldritch Veritole, just as she’d done a hundred times before. The eldritch motioned for the others to come closer as well and then told his boy to go fetch him a mug of Ord’s dark.

  The boy argued, suggesting tea or wine instead, but the look in the old man’s eyes made him give in. The eldritch’s ancient gaze then settled on Chelda, and a warm, pink smile split across his ever-thinning beard.

  “Chelda Flar,” he said. “Daughter of Riggaton Murl Flar and Janeva Tynerly. You’ve grown up tall and beautiful, and now you’ve made me feel my age, girl.”

  The old man reached out his walking stick and tapped Chelda on the shoulder kindly. “Riggaton Manix told me you went and faced down our Shangelak and that you need a tale from me.” He looked around and harrumphed. He waited until Vanx moved a chair over for Gallarael, and for Xavian to get himself comfortable as well.

  The old gargan eyed Vanx and squinted, hiding most of what was in the depths of those sea-blue orbs. He cocked his head curiously and then asked, “Which story do you want to hear?”

  “Only the whole one.” Vanx let the old man see into his own well-seasoned visage. “Particularly those parts of it that pertain to the Hoar Witch and the child she left in Orendyn.”

  “Well, there is the elaborate version, and then there’s the sum of all the half-truths that I’ve pieced together over the years.”

  The old man paused and gave a kindly nod to Chelda. He looked back at Vanx, then continued. “The truth of it isn’t much of a storyteller’s tale, but I’ll tell it.”

  The boy returned, and the eldritch took a wooden mug from him. After taking a deep pull, he winced at the bite of the drink and then got right to it.

  “Where she came from or why she is still here, none of us can say,” he started. “She’s been around longer than texts and scrolls have been kept, and she has eluded most of those quite well. Before the rise of the Black King and his wizards of the Trigon, she was here. In those days, she was just a fireside tale for our ancestors, but it was a potent one. She opposed the Black King’s rising, and in a way saved this part of the world from falling completely under that particular evil influence. Some say the Parydonians drove the Trigon off, but the truth of it is that it was the Hoar Witch and her ill-formed beasts that caused the Trigon to seek power elsewhere.” He paused and sipped, wincing again before continuing.

  “The story of the witch-born captain starts at the very end of all that, I suppose, maybe even a while after. It starts when the priests of Arbor came over to try to spread the seeds and lore of their gods. The forest that they had loved and called home for generations was being timbered for planks and ships’ masts, lodges, and the like, not to mention the war machines the Black King was amassing.

  “One particular priest stumbled upon a deep valley in the Lurr. It is a strange place, this valley, because it is always alive and thriving like a normal forest in the spring. There is snow and rain and all of that, but no matter the season out here in the unenchanted world we live in, be it harsh frozen winter or the sticky summer wet, there, it stays in a perpetual state of lush budding growth.

  “I think this phenomenon is what drew both our witch and our priest to its depths. It’s hard to say what happened for certain after that. Some would say that Saint Elm claimed the forest as a sanctuary, that he gave his soul to protect it, and that the Hoar Witch imprisoned him and took it. Others would say that she tricked and trapped him by changing herself into a beautiful young woman. And even others would say that she used his heart and stole the lore of Arbor from his mind, so that she could start adding the living trees into the mix of her grotesque creativity.

  “She makes her beasts, you know, from a hodgepodge of butchery and dark magic. You’ve only to venture down to the tannery where your Shangelak was skinned this afternoon to see one of them.”

  “That was one of her beasts?” Gallarael gasped.

  “Of course it was. You don’t think something that heinous could be a creation of Ard or Bone or any of the other gods, do you? That thing had a scaled hide stretched over a large, wolfish torso, and the wings of a white wyvern. No, that was no natural thing. It was born of cruel manipulation and ruthless desire, using potions and the darkest sort of magic. It must have been after one of you, since it braved the relatively populated valley to attack.” His eyes settled on Vanx, but only for a beat or two.

  “After us?” Chelda’s look was incredulous and full of doubt.

  “Yes, my dear,” the eldritch went on sympathetically. “I think it sought your group out from the number of hunting parties moving through the mountains. It followed you until it singled out its prey and then attacked you all right there in the open.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Vanx said.

  “I’m not,” the eldritch retorted. “But you, of all of us here, know it’s most likely true.” The old gargan held up a hand to dissuade any defensive comment. “At least you suspect it’s the truth. You have a personal stake in the quest you are on. I can see it in your eyes.” He paused again and looked up toward the bar swiftly, almost like a spooked deer.

  His brows arched, and he called out rather loudly. “You’ll be keeping all this to yourself, Ord. You too, Menna. You’re eavesdropping on eldritch business. You’ll either mind your tongues or I’ll tie them together and leave them that way.”

  A grumble and a feminine snort followed from the shadows, and the eldritch turned back to his audience. In a conspiratorial voice he whispered, “No sooner than you’re underway, they’ll be telling everyone that comes through that another bunch of fools is off to find Rimehold.”

  “How do you know so much about us?” Xavian asked.

  “When you get to be my age, you become perceptive.” The old man’s smile was sly but seemingly sincere. “But none of that matters. I was in the middle of a rather boring tale about the Hoar Witch and the priest.” He drank his mug and extended it toward his boy, who reluctantly took it back to the bar to be refilled.

  “Where were we? Oh, yes… the child. To be honest, I don’t think Aserica Rime bore the child herself, though he was surely of her blood. The craft she practices is a form of necromancy. To give life to the impossible creatures that crawl out of her cauldrons and bladders, she has to give some of herself to each of them.”

  Vanx saw Xavian nodding, as if he understood that to be true.

  “I believe that child was of the fae folk, as much as he was of the Hoar Witch,” the eldritch went on. “You see, the Lurr was a magical place long before Saint Elm or the Hoar Witch claimed it. It was a fairy forest, full of sprites and pixies and the like, so the oldest stories tell us, anyway. But, as with these sorts of things, the truth gets muddled over time. The child went on to captain a ship called Foamfollower and took on a Zythian girl, but I think you know that part of the tale all too well.” Once again, his eyes lingered on Vanx for a moment.

  “What can you tell me of this?” Chelda pushed up the sleeve of her doe-skin blouse and unfastened the Trigon medallion she had tied to her wrist.

  The old gargan only held it long enough to see what it was, then he threw it into the hearth fire with a hiss. The boy returned with his drink, and the old man glared at Chelda as he sipped. When he spoke to her again, he did so crossly. To everyone’s surprise, Chelda just stared at the floor as he chided her.

  “That’s not to be had, nor worn, by the likes of you, girl,” the eldritch scolded. “That’s an evil thing, a thing of binding that can give your mind to the will of its enchanter. Many of our ancestors were controlled by such means.”

  In Chelda’s defense, Vanx explained how they came across the medallion and sword on the frozen corpse out on the tundra. The eldritch listened and nodded but said no more to Chelda on the subject. He did tell them of the Lurr’s living trees, and of some of the strange beasts that had ventured too far out of the deep over the years, but he told them
nothing that gave them any great insight.

  Before he left, he rapped Vanx on the head sharply with his stick. “She is of flesh and blood, that fargin witch, this I know; but if I’ve grown perceptive in my old age, then she’s grown prophetic in hers, for she’s lived ten times as long, or more, than I. To take the Lurr from the fae, she had to wrong them. Most likely, they are her enemies.” He forced himself to his feet and let his boy put his cloak over his shoulders. “The true fairy clans of old always sprang up around a single wholesome tree. The fae folk, and even that old priest of Arbor, are out in the deep of that forest somewhere still, I’d bet. They’ll be rooted in deep. Make of that what you will, but you all must know that there is no great prize to be had. There is no dragon’s hoard or chests of gold. There’s just an evil old witch and her beasts, and they have been killing and terrorizing this part of the world longer than the lot of you together has been alive.”

  With that, the boy led the eldritch through the door and out into the cold.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  We cast our nets into the sea

  and heave a mighty pull.

  And if old Nepton wills it,

  those nets will soon be full.

  --A Fisherman’s Song

  Kegger fit right into the group. He was sure and steady, and when he had an opinion, he expressed it directly and without much regard for whether or not he offended someone, especially Darl, the other rim rider who was with them. On those first days away from Great Vale, Chelda and Kegger took to challenging one another. First it was dagger throwing, then archery that went on until enough arrows were lost that it was irresponsible for them to continue. Then, to Vanx’s amazement, they started spitting. The two of them spent the better part of two days calling out targets and trying to hit them with wads of hawked up phlegm and tiny beads of ice.

  Darl was quiet, but not the friendly sort of quiet. He didn’t like the idea of taking all these ramma up into the deep mountains, and it showed. He didn’t like Kegger or the rest of them much, either. What seemed to irritate him most, though, was the fact that Kegger’s green cloak thoroughly trumped his pumpkin-colored vest in rank.

  Darl never voiced an opinion, but if he disagreed with something, he did a lot of sneering, scowling and mumbling. He had at least warmed up to Gallarael, but that lasted only until a curious cave bear confounded them on the trail one morning.

  Gallarael shed her cloak and instantly changed into her sleek, dark other self. Her roar startled the bear and a few of the ramma right away. Darl fled after the mounts, or, more likely, just fled. Poops found him later, huddling in some snowy shrubs. After the incident, Darl spoke only to the animals that were in his care and occasionally to Kegger to find out what sort of terrain lay ahead for the day.

  Darl’s dislike extended beyond the two-legged companions. He looked at Poops as if he had a grudge against the dog.

  Xavian grumbled a bit as well. The mage’s nagging complaint was based on what the eldritch said to them before he’d left that night. With the lure of no great prize to draw him on, and a lot more confidence in the notion that the Hoar Witch still lived and wouldn’t be welcoming, Xavian seemed to have lost heart in the expedition. To find Rimehold now seemed more like a deadly hazard worth avoiding than some great discovery.

  Vanx had also been disheartened, but for a completely different reason. He’d hoped to gain some bit of knowledge from the old gargan, some tidbit of lore that would help him understand what was urging him toward Saint Elm’s Deep.

  One night at the fire, after a steep, trying trek around an icy jut of dark stone that had exhausted all of them, Gallarael made an observation that restored a bit of purpose to the quest.

  “If the Lurr was really a fairy forest, then might not the fae still be about?” Her comment was made as nonchalantly as ever. “Might they not have been held under the Hoar Witch’s thumb all these centuries?”

  In a chilling mimic of Brody’s voice, Xavian replied, “Might they not have golden plates full of mushroom omelets waiting for us all when we get there?”

  Only Kegger laughed.

  Gallarael defended her argument. “If you see it, it’s clear. Something is pulling at Vanx. If it was the Hoar Witch, then why would she send one of her beasts to kill him? It might be something else that draws him, something she doesn’t want us to find.”

  “The eldritch said it might have been a fairy that bore Captain Saint Elm, not the witch,” said Chelda. “That wasn’t so long ago he was born, was it?”

  “Bah.” Darl rose angrily. “These here is spook hunten is all,” he said with his barely comprehensible accent. “Yeer all feels and a treein to get me keeled.” He stalked off to where the ramma were hobbled, mumbling as he went.

  Kegger roared out laughing at the outburst, but Xavian spoke over the huge gargan’s deep-bellied mirth.

  “I suppose getting to save some possibly nonexistent fairy folk from an evil witch should be enough reward for risking our lives against that malformed beast and traveling through an icy hell and whatnot.” The sarcasm in the mage’s voice was as thick as molasses, but he was smiling for the first time in days when he continued. “I suppose I’m here for my friend, as much as I am for the glory.” His eyes were on Vanx then. “If you’ve got to go into the deep, Vanx, I guess I do too. From here on out, I’ll quit bellyaching about it.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Chelda shook her head.

  “Thank you.” Vanx tried not to wince when he said the words. He didn’t want to feel responsible if any more of his friends met their end.

  Poops wiggled over to Xavian, plopped his head on his lap and settled in.

  “I’ve been listening to all your spook talk for days,” Kegger said quite clearly, but with a caravaneer’s crudeness to his words. All of the gargan accent that had been in his voice when speaking of knives and bows, during his battling with Chelda, was gone, as if it had never been there. “My orders were to get you to the Lurr and wait for you to come out.” He hefted his axe and thumbed the edge he’d been sharpening nightly at the fire. “I’ve got a good bit of unfinished business in them woods myself. ‘Tweren’t no frost bite that took his limbs. The tree that had my brother was real, I swear it. I had to cut him from it. It was foul smelling and as evil as the Letch itself. It bled thick red blood, just like you or I would, where my axe struck. I hurt it, and it screamed right at me before it turned Sean loose. It weren’t no magic fairy tree. This was as black and cold as the Letcher’s own wrath.”

  “But you saw no sign of the fae in the Lurr?” Gallarael asked.

  “If I did, I didn’t know what it was.” Kegger chuckled. “Deer, elk, bear and wolf. I know these signs well, but I’ve never seen a fairy turd, much less been inclined to look for one.”

  *

  The conversation went on into the night, and Aserica Rime observed intently through the senses of Warble, a ferret-mouse sneak that had crept up into the branches nearby.

  Just before dawn, the little white-furred creature slipped past Poops’s sleepy guard and found his partner, Flitch. Flitch was a hawk-winged badger-like thing that could carry the smaller sneak in its claws as it followed the group’s daily progress from the air.

  The Hoar Witch now knew that something was calling the young warlock to her forestand that his bear cub beast was but a young pet in a heavy shrew fur coat. The shapeshifter, though, was real enough. The raw power that radiated from her when she was in a beastly form was considerable.

  However, one of the gargans would have to die first. The mage was nothing to her, nor the animal herder. Both of them were too scared to pose a real threat. The barbarian bitch with the Trigon sword might actually be dangerous, and the big gargan, Kegger, had already drawn bloody sap from her tree-kin. He was another matter altogether.

  Aserica was confident that Kegger would remember the fear he’d felt before, at least if he was reminded properly. When the time came, he would flee with the mage and the handler. No, it was t
he big bitch with the blade or the shapeshifter on whom she would invite Slither to feed. They were the most potent threats in this little group of fools.

  At least for now.

  The warlock was a real threat, too, but the dark one had plans for him. All she could do was warn her beasts to be wary of him. In the meantime, she planned to find out exactly who or what it was that was calling the warlock home. Luckily for her, the shapeshifter had just unwittingly told her exactly where to look.

  The fairy tree.

  *

  The next day brought the group out of a dense finger of forest, to the edge of a deep gorge. Across that they could see the beginnings of the sheer cliff face they’d soon have to traverse. It was a sheer, jagged wall of sparkling glacial ice. Just as they first laid eyes on the awesome site, a huge chunk of the stuff the size of a lodging house broke free high on the cliff and slowly tumbled away, only to shatter into a million pieces when it hit the frozen surface below.

  A score of massive blue-and-white moths all wheeled away from the great palisade as another piece of ice came loose. It was a wondrous sight.

  When Vanx turned to look, he saw something else, though. Deep inside a dark blue hole in the cliff face, a rather large shape quickly retreated from sight.

  “We will camp soon,” Kegger said, distracting him. “Over there, if the ice bridge is still stable. If all goes well, we will spend the morrow sliding along the ice falls on a ledge no wider than a fence plank, and we’ll be at the edge of the Lurr by evening.”

  “What if the ice bridge isn’t stable?” Xavian asked.

  “I guess we’ll find out how well the river down there is frozen over.” Kegger chuckled and heeled his ramma mount on a course that ran parallel to the edge of the gorge.

  The ice bridge was indeed stable. It was a place where the walls of the gorge were so close together that the years of accumulated windblown and ice had clogged the gap and formed a perfectly passable bridge. Even more amazing was that this span was more than a dozen paces wide. On the other side of it, Kegger led them to a cavern formed of ice and rock. It had obviously been used before. There was an iron fire-bowl and a stack of chopped, seasoned wood against one wall. There was no smoke flue, and the ceiling was stained a filthy, sooty black. A small pile of frozen deer bones graced a large, yellow-red stain in the snow at the back of the recess. It was a shelter made for maybe four adults, so it was crowded with six and an ever-frisky dog. No one responded at all when Darl snorted and stormed out to pitch his tent near where the ramma were hobbled.