Foxwise - A Legend of Vanx Malic Short Story Read online

water before nightfall we might be able to find something better.”

  “Good thinking,” Barb said.

  They didn’t find much when they finally made it to the bank. It was more of a fracturing ice shelf than a shore, and there was nothing to aid them except a single log about the size of a gargan’s leg.

  They decided to use the log and keep going. It was cloudy but the moon was full and its pale yellow glow found its way through. The water was freezing cold, but Barb promised a hot fire for when they were on the island, so no one complained.

  They were half way across the glass-smooth lake when they saw something circling in the sky. They knew what it was immediately. It was Sloffin, one of the hoar witch’s foul beasts and now it was diving right at them. Part griffon, part mountain cat, and covered in slick gray scales, Sloffin was hard to see in the blustery mountains, but down here he was far more visible. It didn’t matter though. All it meant at the moment was that they could see Sloffin diving at them. There was nothing they could do. They were floating on a log in the middle of a lake.

  “Just dive under the water when it’s on us,” said Thorn. “We can swim while it circles back and eventually we will get over.”

  “Yes,” Barb agreed, as she slipped off of the log so that it was under her arm and she was mostly in the water.

  “I’ve got it,” Bristle said and Thorn saw that he had drawn his bow. “Dive away now.”

  Thorn had no reason to doubt Bristle’s deadly accuracy, but what happened next churned the meager food right out of his guts.

  Bristle clamped his legs on the log and steadied his aim, then just as Sloffin was on them, he made to loose his arrow. The gut bowstring stretched because it was wet. The arrow flew like a windblown twig. Then a reptilian claw crushed Bristle’s body to a pulp as it snatched both him and the log up and banked back toward the mountains.

  “Oh no,” Barb sobbed. “It squaw—squaw-- squashed him.”

  Thorn was suddenly aware of the importance of their quest again.

  “Swim,” he said as he did the same.

  When they finally reached the shore they barely had enough strength left to drag themselves off of the icy cold beach and into the shrubs.

  Three

  Being elves they needed no light to see, but Barb made a bit of arcane fire to help warm and dry them. Under a thick-leaved sticker bush, Thorn felt fairly well protected. He had no idea what sort of predators inhabited the island but he doubted any of them would prickle their mug to get at them where they were. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that Bristle was dead. He’d been a good elf, and had a wife and daughter back in the Underland.

  “Look,”

  Barb pointed up into the sky. Her magical fire vanished with a static pop.

  Thorn saw Sloffin up there circling. The malformed griffin beast circled again and again, but eventually moved out of view.

  They took turns sleeping until the sun pinkened the sky, then they started exploring the island. It wasn’t pleasant for either of them. They’d both respected Bristle and missed him dearly. Their hearts were heavy, but they closed in on the towers in a safe and methodical fashion. The climate was another thing. They were used to the Heart Tree’s perpetual spring. The cold quickly began taking its toll on what little energy they’d restored with their rest.

  “Let’s go down here,” Barb pointed at a snow-slicked stairway that led down from the rubble of the tumbled tower.

  “We can at least get warm and have a sit while we prepare. I’ve a flask of battle-berry juice, and another of rum.”

  “I’ll sip the juice. I was thinking the whole tower would be where the wizard kept his valuables,” Thorn replied, but didn’t hesitate to follow Barb as she crept into the rubble and down the stone stair.

  “Queen Corydalis said that we would find the shard in the complex of passages that connect the towers underneath.”

  Thorn followed her with his hand on the hilt of his sword. They didn’t need light to see by, but Barb cast forth a small glowing orb and sent it ahead of them. They were lucky for it.

  As Barb stepped onto a lower floor, Thorn saw a large shape dive at her from the shadows. The old magic blade he was carrying came clear of its scabbard and went slicing down between his companion and her would-be attacker. He felt the slightest bit of resistance when it met flesh, but it only slowed a fraction as it clove through the wolfish thing.

  There was no jolt of powerful magic when the blade impacted, so thorn knew this was no witch born beast. It didn’t matter what it was now anyway, for it was in two pieces and bleeding out on the dingy half-rotted planks.

  Barb moved away and made her light flare brighter. To his surprise there was nothing on the floor. Had the creature he’d just slain been an illusion? Or did it disappear after it died?

  “’Twas a door ward is all,” Barb said as she gathered her composure. “’Twas put there to scare off scavengers and such.”

  “About scared a stain in my britches is what it did,” Thorn said.

  “Here,” she cast a sizable blue blaze into existence. It appeared in its own fire bowl right there in the floor. “Pull up a stool and get warm. I will cast a few detecting spells and we can get on with it.”

  Just as soon as he was comfortable Barb handed him the flask she had been sipping from. He could tell by the smell that it was battle berries. Once he drank of the stuff he would be revived and eager to get into a scrap. He knew he would be warm too, so he tilted the tin back and took two good swallows.

  The tower’s weather-rotted furnishings were all made to accommodate a human, or maybe a gargan. Thorn wasn’t sure which the wizard had been, but he was sure he felt small here. The tabletop Barb had placed her pack on, was really the seat of a sitting bench and the dusty wooden spoon he’d spied looked big enough to row a ship with.

  “Have you found anything?” he asked.

  He sat the flask in Barb’s reach and climbed over a fallen beam of tar-covered wood. He could see a perfectly straight line of shadow on the far wall, and after considering it, he was hoping he’d found a secret door or something similar.

  He stopped before a tilted wood divider panel. It was a small door all right, but he doubted it had been any sort of hidden thing. It was probably just a cabinet. Thorn wasted no time wondering. He let the confident surge of the battle berries fill him and opened the door.

  “I sense a trap or two is all,” Barb said over her shoulder just as a sharp, pain-filled jolt of energy zapped Thorn into a momentary stupor.

  “Tha—Thanks for that,” he managed. He hoped she didn’t see his foible. As he eased away from the cabinet he stopped. He saw a shining bit of something in the corner of the cubby and grabbed it. It was a piece of polished silver with a symbol carved on it. The symbol was a triangle over an ellipse and seeing it made him drop the thing and move back over to Barb’s side.

  “What was that?” Barb asked as the trinket thunked on the floor.

  “A Trigon pendant,” Thorn said. He patted at his hair and adjusted his armor. He was sure it looked like a self-conscious gesture, but he was just trying to make sure he wasn’t on fire or something because Barb was looking at him as if he had suddenly sprouted leaves.

  Barb giggled and Thorn followed her eyes. His chest and arms were splattered with a thin coat of yellow goo.

  “Falriggin studied the Trigon. By the way, you were just sprayed by Lectrius Aracnus. You should probably wipe that stuff off before it gets hard and ruins your gear.”

  “What? Lectris Arcanus?”

  “A shock-spider,” she shook her head and helped him clean the sticky stuff from his leather armor. “This isn’t our tower,” she spoke as she helped him. “I think you were right. The two ruined towers were damaged long before the old wizard died, so he probably lived and worked in the whole one. I don’t sense anything below us here, save for a cellar.”

  Thorn found the flask and took another long pull from it. He handed it to
Barb who only nipped at the stuff before putting it away and repacking her gear. A moment later she made their fire disappear and led them up and out into the cold again.

  They only made it twenty paces before Thorn stepped past and stopped her.

  “Look,” he pointed at some fresh tracks in the snow. “Dire rats.”

  “We must have scared them from their holes. They don’t usually brave the cold.”

  “They lead right to the entry of the whole tower,” Thorn said.

  “Maybe they’ll try and surprise us.”

  “Let’s go find out,” Thorn nodded his agreement. The battle berries had his blood up and he was ready. Obviously Barb was too, for she was mouthing the words to a spell as she stalked ahead of him.

  Four

  Dire rats were dog sized, but not very formidable creatures. Thorn was aware that they could be a terrible foe if there were enough of them though. Many a time he and his elves had been dispatched to get a rat out of one Underland tunnel or another. The tracks he and Barb were following were left by three of the vermin and Thorn was hoping they would get the chance to face them. He loved the feel of the Glaive of Gladiolus in his hands and the smell of fresh blood. He skipped ahead of Barb to open the door for her, but she caught his sleeve and stopped him.

  “How did the rats close the door?” She pointed down and it was clear that the fresh rat prints lead inside.

  Just then a sound of clanking dishes came to them. After that there was nothing but silence.

  Thorn watched as Barb concentrated on a spell. She was beautiful, he’d already decided, fierce and smart, and then he was forced to channel his sudden ardor, lest the battle berries get something besides his blood up.

  Barb’s eyes shot open in what Thorn thought might have been fear and the door creaked open of its own accord before them. The elven mage cautiously pushed it the rest of the way and eased inside. Thorn followed her, drawing the Glaive as he went. They both saw a flittering rat-tail as the creature it was attached to shot up the chimney. A disturbed saucer rolled and rolled on a table as if that had been where the rat had been feeding when they disturbed it. The sound was nerve-racking and went on and on, until finally it ceased in a frantic rattle.

  “Maybe the wind blew the door closed,” Thorn suggested.

  “Maybe,” Barb nodded. “But I sense something bad here. I sense real evil.”

  “It smells like that fireplace has been used recently,” Thorn took a deep breath and let the power of the battle berries lift his courage.

  “That’s brimstone you’re smelling, not the fire hole,” Barb said before she pointed her finger at one of the cabinets and caused the door to swing open revealing a score of beady red eyes.

  Both elves were instantly on guard. Thorn couldn’t figure how they were all stuffed in the cabinet so tightly, but it didn’t matter because the not-so-little vermin were now leaping out to attack.

  All around the two surprised elves the cabinet doors flew wide and rats of all sizes came pouring into the room. The main door slammed shut and Thorn cleaved the first one that came close enough. He’d hoped the violent move would have scared the others but instead they went into a frenzy, even snatching up the pieces of their fallen and ravaging them as if they hadn’t eaten in months.

  Barb cast forth a streak of yellow energy and Thorn saw that the rats squinted and shied away from the brightness of it. When the magic connected with the cabinet on the far side of the room, a bloody, furry mess exploded outward and those rats which weren’t rent apart in the blast came charging over the others to get at them. It was all Thorn could do to step in front of Barb and stab the nearest of them as they came.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Barb called over all the squeaky roaring noise. “There are just too many of them.”

  “Arghhh,” Thorn replied as he stepped into the fray and used his decades of training to wield the magical blade.

  A stab here, then a twirl, and a hacking slice that split a couple of the smaller beasts in two. Then the battle lust was on him. He saw Barb standing slack jawed as one of the larger rats leapt onto her back, but then he was forced to fight again as another wave of them closed their circle.

  Blood splattered Thorn’s face and his weapon was almost torn from his grasp when it didn’t come completely free of his last victim.

  He saw Barb again, this time her expression was savage and her face was bleeding. The sight of her gave him strength and he yanked his blade loose and attacked with even more vigor than before.

  Another streaking flash of a yellow energy shot across the room and more rats exploded into bloody pulp. Before him, one of the largest rats he’d ever seen, a toothy bastard that was three feet tall at the shoulder, had set its beady eyes on him. This one was a real dire rat, and Thorn knew from experience that if they killed the dire rats the others would lose their courage and flee.

  “Just kill the big ones!” he yelled as he lit into the one before him with a series of savage thrusts, spins, and hacks. He sank his blade into it but was tripped by some of the smaller rats as they got under his feet. In a matter of heartbeats he was swarmed over so thickly that he couldn’t even see anymore. One of the little buggers shoved its head in his mouth and he felt them pushing into every opening his armor would allow them. He felt their teeth as they started taking tiny little bites. Then the dire rat pounced on his chest sending the other vermin scrambling away. Finger long teeth bared in anticipation as warm slobber dribbled across his face.

  Thorn tried to raise his sword but his arm was pinned. He tried to roll away but couldn’t. He could do little more than squeeze his eyes shut and say a prayer to Babd, the elven god of battle, and hope his life left him quickly. To make it worse, the last thing he heard as the dire rats finger long teeth closed over his face was Barb screaming now too. Somewhere in the room she was meeting the same sort of end as he.

  Barb yelled again, this time she was calling his name.

  “Thorn! Don’t move a muscle!” she yelled and he wondered why she hadn’t seen that he was pinned?

  There was a low grinding sound then a powerful whooshing of heat flashing over him. Then he realized the dire rat was no longer there. In fact his whole area was free of them. Without hesitating, he rolled to his feet and understood why she hadn’t wanted him to move. A blast of her arcane fire had scorched everything in its path to cinders. The path he realized had passed less than a finger’s breadth over his armor, which showed clearly, with soot, how close her spell had come to ending him too.

  “Look,” Barb was pointing as she wielded her dagger against the last dire rat Thorn could see. Thorn turned and saw that her fiery spell had not only killed a good portion of the rats but had blasted away another set of cabinets revealing a stairway leading down. “Go down,” she grinned through the bloody mask her face had become.

  “You’ll not want to be up here when I cast again.”

  Then her dagger bit deeply into the dire rat’s neck and her hands started moving the gestures to a spell.

  Five

  Thorn didn’t doubt her ability, but he had a hard time just jumping into the stairwell and leaving her. When the crackling power started gathering in her hands, he didn’t wait though. He took three strides and leapt headlong only to crash into the far stone wall, fall to the landing, and start tumbling down the fancy stone-worked stair.

  Barb’s shadow met her at the same wall and a flash of orange and yellow blinded Thorn so that he didn’t see her until she came rolling down and stopped right beside him.

  “You alive?” he asked.

  “Barely,” she sat up with a groan. “I think were closed in now.”

  “Looks like it, but at least the rats all seem to be up there.” Thorn looked at the bites on his exposed skin. There were others that he couldn’t see. They were far from debilitating, but left untended they would fester and eventually blacken his blood. He dug a cork-stoppered vial out of his gear and stood before Barb.

&nbs
p; “Let me tend your face before we go any further.”

  The claw slice was thin but had bled enough that her neck and the collar of her belted robe were saturated.

  She let him and he didn’t try to hide his admiration for her. He never said anything, but several times while he was cleansing her wound, their eyes met.

  Another time and place, he thought her’s said.

  He had to agree.

  Even though he wanted her at that moment, the weight of their quest and the loss of Bristle wouldn’t slip from the back of his mind. They way she shied away and batted her long lashes though, told him she was indeed interested in pursuing the idea after they were home.

  This time Thorn only took a tiny sip of the juice, then he unlaced his chest armor and removed his gauntlets so that he could apply the salve to himself. In the meantime, Barb searched the room with her magic and went straight to a cabinet similar to the one she’d just destroyed. After a few moments she opened a small panel and pulled the lever she found behind it.

  There was the sound of what might have been a rolling marble, followed by a small splash, and then a hissing sound. After that the wall sparkled and started disappearing, revealing a far cleaner, and better-maintained stairway leading down.

  To Thorn’s amazement, the torches ensconced on the walls came sputtering to life and a slight, yet noticeable, breeze of fresh-smelling air passed across his barely covered torso. He shivered and saw Barb smile at him.

  “You’ve missed a bite or two I think,” she came over, took the vial and went to a knee behind him.

  He wiggled and almost yelped as her finger slid through a hole in the back of his leather britches. She found three more bites that he’d missed as well. Thorn was thankful for her help and made a mental note to strip down to his skin and double check again just as soon as he could. He knew a brownie that had been bitten on the earlobe once by a dire rat. Three days later, the thing was swollen to the size of a gourd.

  Thinking about that caused Thorn to draw his sword and use its shiny surface as a mirror. Looking over his shoulder he saw Barb shaking her head at him.

  “What do ya think I’m gonna do back here?” she asked with a forced grin.

  “‘Twas thinking about that brownie that lost his ear to a rat bite a while back.”

  “They call him ’Whatter,’ now,” she nodded as she stood. “Says ‘what?’ every time you speak to him.”

  This time her giggle was a little more genuine.

  “I didn’t miss any of the bites, unless they’re under your skivvies. If you feel obliged, take it all off and look.”

  Thorn blushed despite the battle-berry juice he’d been sipping. She gave him the salve and then took the flask of juice and downed its contents. After that she helped Thorn back into his armor, all the while his head was filled with a mixture of battle lust, embarrassment, and quite a bit of desire. But finally it was time for them