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

  Vanx felt much the same.

  “Are you sure?”

  “It was covered in slobber,” she growled. “Nothing is on the other line. Ask him what in Bone’s name, he thought… Oh.” She could see that Kegger wouldn’t be answering any questions soon.

  “Help me get him inside,” Vanx said. “I can help him, but I will need boiling water and clean linen, and Xavian wide awake, if possible.”

  It was no easy task lugging the giant man to the cabin, but they got it done.

  “At least he will live,” Chelda said. “I wonder if Darl was on the other end of that line when those fargin things chewed through. I should have pulled it all the way up.”

  Vanx didn’t tell her that he doubted one of those wolves could have worried through a braided silk rope so swiftly. Nor did he tell her that Kegger and Darl were most likely going after Gallarael’s corpse when the pack of wolf-beasts attacked them. These revelations were assailing his own mind as he thought them. It was enough to send him spinning into a deep, dark void of guilt and despair, but for Kegger’s sake he pushed it all aside and focused on the task at hand.

  Xavian moaned and flailed and rubbed at the raw chafes where his legs had been shoved through the holes in the canvas corpse rig. Chelda filled him in slowly as he came to full consciousness, and Vanx did what he could to prepare Kegger’s leg for the mage to inspect.

  Eventually, Vanx’s brain slowed down, and he slipped into a deep, spell-weary sleep full of sorrow and anguish and guilt, and when he opened his eyes, he found he was in something more real than any nightmare he’d ever imagined.

  *

  An ancient, wrinkled hag’s face, with as many warts as stray hairs sprouting out of it, peered down at Vanx through some shimmering, skin-like membrane. Her eyes were tiny and black, and looking at Vanx from over her shoulder was an imposing bull-headed giant of a thing. The old woman’s greasy yellowed hair hung in disarrayed tangles, and the evil grin that spread across her ugly face showed a jagged, brown-toothed maw. This was the Hoar Witch, Vanx understood. This was Aserica Rime.

  “He sees us,” she cackled to the minotaur. “He’s looking back at us from his slumber. Welcome to Saint Elm’s Deep. Or should I say my deep?” The last was said in a quick, unnatural hiss which reminded Vanx of the serpent that had thrown Gallarael to the bottom of the gorge.

  The wide, horned-head of the minotaur leaned in closer as the Hoar Witch returned her full attention to him. “I know why you came here, warlock,” she said through her snarl. “Tell your friends goodbye, for I am soon going to kill them all and feed you their guts.” She elbowed the minotaur back sharply. “Go get the pixie queen,” she snapped at him. “Let him see her.”

  The looming form behind her moved purposefully away and out of the view of Vanx’s mind’s eye, but the Hoar Witch kept speaking.

  “The dark one wants me to take you in and train you in the ways of witchery, so that he can have you to take my place when I finally turn to dirt.” Her face suddenly went wild and, if possible, uglier than it had just been. Her eyes sank in, and the thick clumps of her hair lifted from her now ghastly face by means of some unfelt wind. Her expression was brimming with hatred, and her dark eyes were full of evil malice. “I know what I will do, for it was the wicked little fairy folk who tricked you here, not the dark one.” She spat at him, and the thick globule hit the surface of whatever sheen it was that carried her visage to his mind. Ripples blurred the view, but only for a moment.

  “You’ve come seeking to invoke your blood-right to take back the forest. It may be your duty to defend the filthy little fae, but you’re blood-bound to me as well. You will turn around and leave Saint Elm’s Deep behind you. You will leave this forest to me, or I will finish ripping apart your pathetic friends and stalk you to your grave. And we both know that your godsdamned impossible bloodline will ensure me the enjoyment of doing so for many a century to come.”

  Just then, the minotaur returned. He held something the size of a young child dangling from his huge, filthy-nailed hand.

  Vanx sat up and peered deeper into the watery sheen of his dream. Was that thing holding an elf? Was it a girl-child? No, he was holding it up by a pair of crumpled, glassine wings. It was a pixie, the Pixie Queen of the Lurr. He knew, because in her eyes he saw the very source of the frantic draw that had pulled him here.

  Her body, though not even three feet tall, was perfectly proportioned and mature. The tattered remains of a sheer gown trailed over her breasts, and one of her hands was covering her pubic area in a futile show of modesty.

  Vanx met her big, hopeless, lavender eyes and felt ashamed to be gazing on such an atrocity. The fae folk--the elves, fairies, and pixies--were distant cousins to the Zythians and the other races of Zwar. The little folk were the most joyous and peaceful people to have ever graced the face of the world. And here was this broken queen forced to cower in shame. She couldn’t even raise her eyes to meet his.

  “This is the one that has been calling you, fool.” The Hoar Witch thumped the pixie woman hard in the nose. The pixie squealed and then summoned some courage from somewhere. Her tiny hands went to her mouth. She cupped them there to help her voice carry.

  “Run away!” she screamed. “She will kill you, if you don’t.”

  The queen gained a handhold and squirmed, trying to break free of the minotaur’s grasp, but it was hopeless. “I am so very sorry for the loss of your friends.” Her eyes darted at the Hoar Witch fearfully. Already, Aserica Rime’s bony hand was moving to strike her. “Summoning you was a mista—” Her words were cut off when the Hoar Witch’s hand smacked across her face.

  With the fleshy “pop” of the impact, the vision flashed away.

  Poops’s warning barks were what shocked Vanx out of his stupor, but it was the cruel slap that had set the dog off, he was sure of it. Poops had been seeing the dream in his sleeping mind, too.

  Even through the cloudy haze of Vanx’s fatigue, the pleading sorrow in the pixie’s lavender eyes stuck in his mind, as if it had been etched into the back of his forehead. It was she who had been calling him all this time. Why hadn’t he hurried? Could he have saved her?

  The Hoar Witch was right about one thing: Vanx was bound to defend the helpless fae, if not by blood, then by simple honor. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing that he’d walked away with the witch controlling them.

  He decided he would kill the Hoar Witch and rid the Lurr of her taint forever. He knew he wouldn’t fail, because he absolutely refused to let Gallarael’s death be for naught. In fact, he let her death be the spark that ignited the inferno of his wrath. Already, Brody’s death was the kindling, and Darl, Kegger, and now the pixie queen would fuel the blaze.

  Still dizzy and half-dazed, Vanx soothed Poops’s anger and let the roaring fire in the cabin’s hearth carry him back into sleep. It was easy this time, for all the mystery and uncertainty of his quest was gone. He’d made it to Saint Elm’s Deep. He knew who had called him, and he had a good idea why. All he had to do now was save the pixie queen, and even if he couldn’t manage that, he had to kill that frigid fargin witch.

  The End of Book 3

  Enjoy this preview of:

  The Legend of Vanx Malic – Book Four – That Frigid Fargin Witch

  Due for release in early 2014

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Robb Mathias Jr.

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  “Vanx!” Chelda hissed urgently. “Wake up, Vanx. There’s something on the roof. Poops is out there with it.”

  The last words brought Vanx up and fully alert. “What’s happening?” he asked. He could hear Poops outside barking insistently but was feeling no urgent warning signs through the link he and his four-legged companion shared. They were in a rim rider lodge that sat near the edge of the Lurr Forest.

  Xavian answered for Chelda, for she was peeping through the barely cracked door of the cabin they were holed up in, with an arrow nocked and
drawn in her bow.

  “She let him out to do his thing,” the mage said.

  Xavian didn’t look so well. Vanx hoped it was because he’d been casting spells to heal Kegger’s leg and not from some internal wound he took when he slammed into the cliff wall the day before. “There was a scratching sound, like something skittering across the roof. Then Poops went off and hasn’t stopped.”

  Vanx strained his ears and listened, while studying the gray-blue quality of the light outside the cabin door. It was too bright to be full night. Had he slept till dawn? The question faded when his keen ears picked up a slow, repetitive wheezing sound coming from above them.

  It was impossible to determine what the origin of the strange sound might be, because there was a thick layer of snow and ice caked over the shake roof, not to mention Chelda’s heavy breathing close by, and Poops carrying on outside.

  Mentally, Vanx reached for Poops, then, for the familial link he’d been sharing with the dog. He’d never done such a thing before, at least not intentionally, but at that moment, it seemed like the perfectly natural thing to do. To his great surprise, he slipped right into the dog’s consciousness. Even more strange was that Poops didn’t seem to be aware of the intrusion. One moment, Vanx was seeing through his own eyes, the next he was in Poops’s head, feeling the dog’s agitation over the thing he had just seen and could still smell and hear. Whatever it was, it was definitely on the cabin’s roof.

  Two separate odors dominated the scent-scape, for this was the sense the dog was relying on most at the moment. One was fresh, coppery blood, and not the blood of the foul wolf-beasts’ carcasses lying out in the trees. The smell was separate. This blood was new, warm even. Besides the blood, the other scent he detected was as out of place as the blood was on a rooftop but for an entirely different reason. This smell Vanx recognized from the island home of his youth. Daffodils, or marigolds maybe, but springtime flowers for certain. The smell brought back a mental image of his mother, her long, golden hair windblown, her loving smile and kind amber eyes set in a face smudged with dark, wholesome earth. All around her were her flower gardens, the myriad colored petals— red, pink, yellow, lime, turquoise and blue, all alive and hosting an entire world of their own. A world full of butterflies and bees and intoxicating fragrances.

  Vanx slipped out of the moment of reverie because Poops had stopped barking. Both dog and Zythian looked up at the cabin roof through Poops’s eyes. What they were waiting for, Vanx wasn’t certain, but when a head the size of a grapefruit, hooded in silver fur, popped up over the peak, Vanx only had a fleeting moment to see that the creature’s eyes were as golden as any Zyth’s. They were full of more pain and fear than anything. He wasn’t sure, for Poops started barking and moving around again, startling it away, but he thought it might have been an elf.

  Vanx let himself slide out of Poops’s consciousness. It was as easy as slipping into it had been.

  “Put the bow away, Chelda,” Vanx said. “Stay here. It’s all right. I’ll go out and get him.”

  “Are you sure?” Xavian asked. “It’s not one of those things that did this, is it?” The mage was staring at the scabby pink wound that covered Kegger’s lower leg.

  “No.” Vanx shook his head. He was glad to see that Xavian had indeed been tending to the gargan’s wounds. “I think it’s a bit of help that Poops has scared into hiding.”

  As he pulled on his shrew-fur coat, both Chelda and Xavian looked at him curiously, but neither of them questioned him as he went out.

  “Hush,” Vanx told the dog. He had to say it a second time, and in a more commanding tone, for his voice to register through the dog’s irritation. Poops grew excited when he saw Vanx, though, and waggled his rear-end. He sent an odd feeling of curious playfulness up Vanx’s spine. Then he barked and pointed his nose at the roof several times. Vanx knew he would have to take the time to learn all of the subtle canine signals and postures that formed his friend’s communication, but he had a good idea of what Poops would be saying, if he could talk.

  The sun’s rays weren’t yet touching any part of the heights, but it had broken the horizon beyond the peaks, and the sky was the color of a bright day at sea. With his keen vision, he could see as plainly as if it were midafternoon.

  “You on the roof,” he called out in as pleasant a voice as he could manage. “Are you injured? Do you need help?”

  For a long while, there was no response. Then a hesitant little head covered in hair the color of fresh strawberries peeked up to the nose over the roof. The silver-furred hood was pushed back now, revealing elven features.

  “You are him,” it said in a high-pitched, squeaky, yet still masculine voice. The golden eyes went wide and hopeful. Then, a wincing grin split the little man’s face as he rose up. When Vanx didn’t immediately respond, the head inched back down so that only its eyes were peeking over the roof again.

  “You’re him, aren’t ya?” the elf asked again.

  “I am me, yes,” Vanx answered, not sure what the proper response to such a question might be. He knew he had a stupid grin on his face, but he couldn’t suppress it if he’d wanted to. He was actually talking to an elf, something only the luckiest of the Zythians ever had a chance to do.

  “Are you injured?” he asked again. “My friend here smells fresh blood.”

  “I’m a bit clawed up,” the elf admitted. “The blood that mighty beast smells is from the witch’s sneak that I killed up on your roof.”

  “What?” Vanx was suddenly alarmed. “The witch’s sneak?”

  “Come around and help me down, then.” The little man was growing bolder by the moment. “I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Vanx did so, with an excited Poops right on his heels. He came around to the back of the cabin just in time to see a snow-white furred thing roll off the roof and half-sink into the snow. As he came closer, he saw that it was some sort of malformed weasel.

  “She be havin’ eyes everywhere, that evil bitch,” the elf said. He came limping down the slope of the roof, holding his right thigh and grimacing with every step. He looked like some enchanted doll, or a master puppeteer’s marionette come to life, as he eased his two-and-a-half-foot-tall body down the slick grade as carefully as you please. “Just yesterday morn, her great cow-man stormed the tree and took our queen.” He paused a few feet from the eaves, put his hand on his hip, and took a few labored breaths. “Queen Corydalis entrusted some of us with the knowledge of your coming.” He took a few more steps down and sat, letting his little legs dangle from the roof’s edge. “But that was at least two full moons past. We’ve been waiting a long time.”

  “I came as soon as I first started to feel her.” Vanx shook his head. “No, I came once I was ready. Until I saw your queen in a vision last night, I knew not who or what call I was following.”

  “You’ve seen her?” The elf’s golden yellow eyes went wide again. “How does she fare?”

  “Not well I’m afraid, if my vision was true.”

  The silver-furred cloak the elf was wearing was stunningly beautiful, and Vanx knew instinctually that the creature it had come from lived its full life before lending this elf its pelt.

  Poops let out an excited bark, causing the elf to cringe.

  “Call off yon beast,” the elf squeaked.

  Vanx laughed out loud.

  The elf glared at him but didn’t even try to hide his fear of the dog. “The Queen of the Fae is in the clutches of the Hoar Witch, and here you are laughing like a loon.” The little elf harrumphed and crossed his arms across his thin chest. “Some said she was foolish to believe that a champion would come. Others said that, if you did, you wouldn’t be worthy. I had hoped they were wrong. You humans have never been good for much.”

  “Now listen, you,” Vanx said. “I didn’t have to come here at all, and some of my dearest friends have died along the way. Besides that, I’m only part human, and not a very large part, since my father was quickened in the Hoar Witch’s kettl
e and birthed from the womb of a fairy. My mother wa—“

  “The ship witch from Zyth,” the elf spoke over him with his tiny little voice. “Queen Corydalis told us all of this, but you look human to me.” He glanced at Poops again. “And your beast looks mean and hungry.”

  “It’s not some beast; it’s a dog,” Vanx returned. “He is my friend, and I suppose he is my familiar. He won’t hurt you. He is just curious. Uh… What’s your name, anyway? Mine is Vanx Saint Elm, and my beast is Sir Poopsalot Maximus.

  “Foxwise Posy-Thorn, at your service,” the elf said grudgingly. “But only because my queen asked it of me. I see not the salvation of the fae in your emerald eyes.”

  “Well, I never claimed to be the salvation of anything, but I am here now, and I mean to kill that frigid fargin witch, and I guess I could use some help. Her twisted beasts are picking my friends off at will.”

  “Well, one less pair of spying eyes on you won’t hurt your cause.” The elf seemed to be feeling a little better after hearing the conviction in Vanx’s murderous declaration. “My friends call me Thorn.” He shrugged. “I suppose you can, too, for now.” Thorn winced as he rose. “Help me to your fire.”

  “You seem a little more than just scratched,” Vanx said, noticing the thick blood on Thorn’s ratskin— or maybe squirrel— trousers. When Vanx reached up and helped him from the roof, he was amazed at how light Thorn was. He started to pull the elf to his chest like one might handle a child, but Thorn grew angry at the idea of it and began to thrash and wriggle.

  “I’m no lass for you to cuddle, Vanx Saint Elm,” he growled in his high tempered voice. “I’d rather face Sir Poopsalot in battle than be toted like a child.”

  “I’m sorry, Thorn” said Vanx. “Honestly, I meant no offense. Here, your leg is hurt, just grab onto his fur and hold on.”

  Before the elf could protest, he was sat astraddle Poops’s back. He looked to need all his focus to hang on as the dog followed Vanx back to the cabin.