They were a week out of the village and had reached the outer borders of Gramnul District. “Now we turn west,” she said as she pointed out the border. Zeke looked in that direction where he could see a large riparian forest, dark and foreboding, and hills marching off to the horizon. He shivered and thought he heard a noise in the wind; like the sound of flapping sails. He looked up to see dark shapes circling in the growing dusk.
“To the wood!” Bru cried as she crouched over Aphrodite and made a run for cover. A large black shape torpedoed out of the sky. Zeke screamed like a child, frightened his animal and found himself on his back in the dirt. He looked up to see three pearl-grey, green-eyed creatures, suspended between huge bat-like wings separated by long skull tipped with a fatal-looking beak. All he could think was that he was going to be the first man to be eaten by pterodactyls.
As he watched, one folded its wings, lowered its head and dove like an unfeathered pelican and he was the fish. He rolled and shimmied as fast as his legs would carry him. It was not fast enough. One landed on his shoulder, sending him spinning back to the ground, an evil primordial scream in his ear, the smell of death hot on his cheek. Another landed on his legs, and he was sure they would kill him. He could feel the flesh being torn from his shoulder, the weight of both of these beasts preventing from using his staff, all the energy in his staff vibrating ineffectually. He struggled not to panic, all he could think about was how this was not how he planned to die, and then suddenly he was free. He got to his feet, standing tall, and raised his staff in the air and cried out words he didn’t know he knew. There was a crash like distant thunder and then silence and he fainted.
As soon as the beasts flew off, Bru pulled Zeke into the shelter of the woods and soon had a fire going. She rummaged in one of the packs for her supplies. She cleaned and dressed the cuts as best she could in the firelight. She brewed a tea for herself and another for Zeke to ease the pain and help him sleep. “We should have been safe in the forest well before nightfall,” Bru chastised herself. Everything took longer than expected in town”. She wondered if Xanthipi had a hand in the attack, though she had never heard of an instance of such control of an animal that you could send it after a single target. Theoretically, it was possible, and it seemed clear that Zeke was the intended target. None of the raptors had even noticed her. Could his power be so great a threat? She cursed herself for not being more careful and dropped another branch on the fire causing sparks to fly. The trees seemed to shiver, sending a cascade of tinkling leaves that would have been pretty under other circumstances.
They left the forest the next morning. First thing they had to do was to find their pack animals that had disappeared during the raptor attack. They found one lume, and most of their provisions that had been scattered in the fracas. Then returned and made their way deeper into the wood, following a wide trail. Zeke nodded in the saddle. Bru kept him dosed with her foul teas, which eased the pain, but made him see double. And he was as tired as he could ever remember being.
Each night they made a small camp and Bruhana continued to teach him magic. Zeke had packed the singing book, and the History of Magick in The Wold, which he studied by firelight. He read about shape shifting, and came away his head swimming with confusion. A very difficult magic. “You know, Bru,” he said as he sat up. “I know you’re on an important, quest and all, but this isn’t me. I’m no magician. I don’t want to be eaten by monsters. I’m not special. Just some lonely peace-loving Hippie from the Haight and I’d surely love to see it again.”
“You? Not magic? Not special? The magic you did the night of the raptor attack is something tyros cannot do. Something you have not been trained to do. Yet somehow you were able to reach inside and find your magic when pressed. I am certain that you will have an important part in this battle. You are very special, Zeke.”
Zeke ran his hands through his thinning long grey-blonde hair, “I don’t even know how I did what I did.”
“That is no matter. You do feel the growing threat. You know even the birds and beasts sense something is brewing and I need your help. I am more certain than ever that you are needed here.” She looked at him sadly. “I cannot send you back.”
“Yet,” he added. “I’ve already been attacked by prehistoric animals and angry birdmen. I’m tired, dirty, and sore. I’m sure I’ll be cold, wet and sick soon enough. This is not my life. I miss my little apartment and my weird customers. I’m no wizard.”
“But you are a wizard,” she insisted. “That’s something very special.” She laid her hand on his arm. “Here you are very special. Back home you were just a lonely man living a lonely life.”
Until that moment he was sure he had been happy in SF. He had lead a rather solitary life after Mickie died; still, he had been content and comfortable. Well, except for the $9,000 in back taxes that he’d never be able to pay off. He definitely did not miss that. But what kind of a mess will he come home to? “What about when I do get back. I mean, what should I tell my friends?”
“That you went on a quest.” She said.
Zeke sighed, lay down and tried to sleep.
Tristam reached the mainland, happy to be on solid ground after 16 days on the ship. In those days, he worked harder than he had in his entire life, and never felt so proud. For the first time, he felt a man, and was somewhat sad to be leaving the ship. Idly he packed his things, and said good-bye to the sailors who stood on the deck, and watched him down the gangplank, calling out coarse jibes and good-byes. They never asked where he came from, only about the places he had sailed. They always seemed happy to listen to his imagined exploits, especially if he really let his imagination sail! Oh the things he might have done, had he stayed aboard.
Though uncouth and unkempt, he already missed the sailors. Footsore and downtrodden, he wondered if he would reach the Council in time. Despite his newfound confidence, doubts constantly threatened his resolve to travel alone through unknown lands. Maybe I should just find somewhere to stay, Tristam thought to himself, again. Forget about the Island. Forget about magic. He longed to do just that. He shook his head. No, it must be the Council.
At dusk, he stopped and set up a meager camp just inside a small wood hoping it would provide protection against prying eyes. He’d seen raptors high in the sky at night, and shadows that seemed to move on their own. They seemed to keep their distance though, as if they were looking for something or someone, but it wasn’t him. He ate a light meal at a smoldering little fire, watching for any creatures the light might attract. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, he stared off into the dense leafy canopy at the colors of the setting suns, wishing he were anywhere but here. His thoughts swirled around in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and decided he didn’t want to think about it anymore, when he heard the rustle of leaves nearby. He slowly scanned the dark woods, unable to see anything, when he heard the rustle again. Rising to his feet, he pulled out his knife grimly, “As if this will protect me. If I were a full wizard, I would feel safe from anything,” he thought.
He jumped nearly out of his skin as a huge wolf came bounding out of the woods toward him. He heard a girlish squeal and reached for the branch above his head, pulling his legs up tight as he tried to climb higher.
Except it wasn’t a wolf, but a dog. A very big dog, but a dog nonetheless, and Tristam slowly unrolled himself from the branch and lowered himself to the forest floor where the dog lay, panting contentedly. Tentatively he reached out a hand, and the dog licked him happily.
“Where’d you come from?” he asked. Then there was another rustle in the woods and he jumped again.
“Wolf, where you at boy? Come here!” called a voice from the darkness, which in a moment was attached to a tall dark shape.
Tristam froze.
“Wolf? You there boy?” the disembodied voice called. The man was just about to move away, when the dog barked. The man turned and approached them. Tristam nervously staying hidden, clutching his knife.
The man moved his head side to side and sniffed.. He reached the dog and put a leash around it’s thick neck and said, “And who is this?” he asked with a blind stare into Tritsam’s eyes. “I thank you sir for finding him. Ding dang if that dog don’tto run the woods like he owned them. Too fast for a blind old man like me to keep up.” He moved closer to Tristam and peered at him through dirty round wire frame glasses. “And who are you?”
“Trum.”
“Pleased to meet you, Trum,” the old man nodded. “Come, my cottage is not far. It will be dark soon and we would be more comfortable with walls about us, yes?”
He chattered as they walked. “Trum. An unusual name. Yet somehow familiar.”
“It’s common where I come from,” Tris muttered.
“And where might that be?”
Tristam slapped himself in the head mentally. “I’m from the Island,” he said.
“Are you now?”
Tristam shivered and it was not because of the chill in the air. “Yes.”
“People don’t usually leave the Island.”
“I guess I’m one of the rare ones that do.”
“I can see that,” he said.
They stopped before a tree house of magical design. Six huge trees stood closely together with small catwalks and bridges. Each tree had been worked into rooms, some with stairs winding up into the canopy. Moving about was tricky in parts and more than once Tris stubbed his toe on a root or got hit in the head by a branch. They reached a large room with a flat wooden floor. There was a table, a bench and two stools. Two large stuffed chairs flanked the fireplace. It was very dark, cozy and homey. He dropped into a chair that seemed to hug him when he finally sat down. He was immediately comfortable as the old wizard sat in the opposite chair.
“So, you left the Island?”
Tris nodded uneasily. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Cummings, wizard of the woods,” he said, and looked at him. “So, you, Trum, were a tryo from the Fortress.”
He gulped and felt worms in his guts. Now it comes, the accusations and this time he’ll be unable to run. He sighed and nodded. He felt oddly relieved to accept his doom.
“I left after Mistress Kahi was taken.”
“Ah,” the wizard nodded. “Terrible thing, that.”
“You know about that?”
The old wizard nodded. “You were accused of her murder.”
It was Tristam’s turn to nod, “I ran to her room when I heard the screams. There was so much blood I thought she was dead. But then she moved and the gargantua took her into his talons and flew away,” he said, holding back tears of relief. “My friends! I lived with most of them since I was 8 years old. How could they? Who can believe that I could destroy a powerful wizard like Kahi?”
He looked at Tristam for a long quiet moment, and said, “I believe you.”
Tristam stared. “You do?”
Cummings nodded. “Of course. You’re sittin’ on one ‘a my chairs. You can’t lie.”
“Really?” Tristam said with the awe of a child as he looked at the smooth brown arms of the chair. He looked at the rest of the room for the first time taking in the varying shades of green, brown and gray. “What do you do out here?”
“I take care of the forest and its creatures.” Cummings picked up a pipe and began to stuff it.
“But even the evil creatures out there?”
“None a my creatures is evil, though lots are dangerous,” he said as he paused to light his pipe with a taper lit from the fire. “It’s best to be indoors afore dark,” he added ominously.
“Are you traveling to the Council?” asked Tristam.
“I care for the forest. I do not leave it.”
“But I thought all wizards had to attend.”
“Not me. I never leave the forest.”
“Never? This is a lovely forest, and you have a beautiful home, but aren’t you lonesome?” asked Tristam.
“I got all my animals and plants and trees that keep me company.”
“I’ve got to get to the Council.”
“Why?”
“To tell them Kahi was alive when last I saw her.”
“I cannot go with you, but I can perhaps provision you for the next step of your journey. You know you will need to go through the Mystyk Marshes to reach Abington.”
“No. I don’t know the geography of this place.”
“Well then, why don’t I fix us some supper and we can plan your trip. I know a thing or two about the swamp and some of the other dangers you’re going to meet.”
Tristam looked up. “What other dangers?”
The wizard shrugged. “The usual: wizards, wargs, ogres, and other things.” He saw the look on Tristam’s face and felt suddenly sorry for the boy. “There’s no reason for you to go on. I think the other wizard’s know all about Kahi by now. Why don’t you stay with me for a bit and I can help you find your place.”
Tris thought about what Cummings said about Kahi. If the other wizards know about her, his name is clear and he could go back to the Fortress and resume his training, or he could do anything. “You have given me a lot to think about Cummings, thank you,” he said as they tidied the kitchen together in comfortable domesticity.
It was still dark when Bru woke him holding her hand to his mouth. “Something is out there,” she hissed in his ear. “I’ve taken precautions, but we must move quickly.”
Zeke got up gathered their gear as quietly as he could. Bru lead the zorses deeper into the forest. Zeke followed with the lume in tow. It was dead quiet. This seemed a little odd to Zeke. He thought they should be hearing rustlings in the leaves and owls, or whatever passed for owls here. Even their footsteps on the path seemed oddly muffled. Then Zeke noticed there were no eyes! Not a single pair of curious eyes watched them pass. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
They followed an animal track, widened over the years by use, but here and there barely wide enough for the animals. They crossed several creeks, or one creek several times, and slogged through mud. It seemed they didn’t stop for days. When finally they stopped Zeke was asleep on his feet. He didn’t need any of Bru’s tea, for when he at last lay down he fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.
He woke to the sound of the wind in the glasslike leaves of the forest and flashes of sunlight through the branches. He sat up. Bru had already stoked the fire and had a porridge going. She handed him a bowl.
“Do I want to know what was trailing us?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure what it might have been, but I believe we have eluded it, at least for now.”
“Too bad. I thought it might be interesting to see what scared the bejezus out of me.”
“The more danger we can avoid, the better,” Bru said as she rose and began to break up the camp. “We are not far from Satureen. We will find shelter with my colleague, Abra, hopefully long enough to put off any pursuers.”
“Can these creatures, or whatever was trailing us, can they follow a scent?”
Bru frowned. “I’m sure I don’t know, why?”
“If they do, maybe we can disguise our scent or cover it up.”
“And thereby avoid detection.” She nodded, “A fine idea.” With a few words and a puff of purple powder, Zeke got a whiff of something flowery and sweet.
The next day they walked out of the wood onto a windswept hilly landscape. The forest marched on up and down the hills heading east and south. To the west, a barren landscape that marched on as far as he could see. “This is worse than the woods,” thought Zeke as he reined in next to Bru, her long hair flapping wildly in the wind.
“Which way?” he asked.
“Satureen is to the west.”
“I’d say stick close to the woods in case of attack.”
Bru nodded and turned Aphrodite southward. As they trotted up and down hills, Zeke had a creepy feeling of blackness growing behind them. “What about Woolton Wood?” Zeke asked.
“I don’t know. I told the mayor they should start evacuating the town into the hills the day we left. He promised he would. I hope they had enough time. The men and women of the Guard will do their best to protect the townspeople and save what they can from the coming destruction.”
“Didn’t anyone maybe see this coming?”
“Well, yes in retrospect, there were signs of Kahi’s growing dissatisfaction with the Council. There had been a time she and I spoke about the differing opinions. She always was headstrong and self absorbed. She also had trouble admitting she might be wrong. But Kahi is my sister. I would rather believe she was dead than to believe she had gone to Khazban.”
“Which is?”
“Where the wizard Xanthipi lives. On the other side of the Deep Dark Forest.”
“Weren’t we already in there?”
“That was the Dim Wood. The Deep Dark Forest is beyond Satureen, and past the Sand Bogs.”
Zeke sighed and wondered, not for the first time, what sort of hell he had fallen into. Pterodactyls and deep dark forests full of other dangerous animals. In the many months he had been here he’d sort of gotten used to the place with its odd trees and double moon. Right now as the wind blew a gale out of the north, and he saw the black clouds moving in, he wished he were back at Bru’s little place, with his feet stretched out on the hearth, listening to Bru read. When the rain hit it was like ice needles through his clothing. They were soaked within minutes. When lightning shot through the air Zeke jumped, but when the thunder pealed, he lost control of his zorse, which dove blindly into the forest crashing through bushes. It was all Zeke could do to avoid being knocked off by whipping branches. When he finally regained control, he turned to look for Bru, but didn’t see her anywhere. He turned Zeus and raced back the way he’d come, thinking he would find Bru nearby, but he didn’t. The storm ended and Zeke stopped, the only sound was the dripping water. “Maybe she didn’t see that my zorse bolted,” he thought. “She may have kept going south.” They might be separated by several miles. The trees dripped and the night was black. He was alone. He had heard of visceral fear, but never felt it until now. He felt crowded and followed and the hair on his arms and neck was up. A cold icicle slid down his back. There is a primordial fear of the dark and all its hidden terrors. It’s similar to butterflies in your stomach, except these were bats. Luckily, the years he’d spent practicing yoga allowed him to calm himself. He slowed his breathing, and cleared his mind and sat very still for a long time. When he opened his eyes, he saw very clearly what he should do and he went about doing it.
He tried to dispell his fears. “Darkness is only darkness. There is nothing lurking in the darkness that isn’t there in the daytime,” he whispered, though his own words did little to soothe him. The sound of his voice was too loud in the silence of the wood. He couldn’t find Bru in the darkness, he might walk right past and never see her. He tied Zeus to a tree, made a damp smolder-y fire and hunkered down on his saddle to stay out of the wet. He spent much of the night trying various spells to dry his clothes to varying degrees of success. He was able to enhance his cloak to better repel the rain and wind and he was very pleased.
Morning reluctantly rose its weary head, and started to shine through the leaves. Zeke broke his camp and went back out onto the hills to look for his master. Once out on the hills the wind battered at him. He looked right, left, north, west, east until his neck was aching. As hilly as this place was, he might still ride right past her camped on the blind side of a hill. He could feel his lips getting chapped. “Does it always blow like this in this part of The Wold”? He wiped his nose and dabbed a cloth to his runny eyes. He decided he might have better luck if he rode out to one of the taller hills. It would mean being further from the relative safety of the wood, but what choice did he have. He had to get a wider view. As he rode out to the top of the tallest nearest hill, the wind began to batter him in earnest. It was difficult to stay mounted, and the zorse balked several times.
It was so difficult to keep his eyes open in the biting wind, so he got off Zeus and looked about for the right items. He picked up several leaves piled on the ground. Then using magic and a Swiss army knife he crafted a pair of goggles. They worked! I didn’t know I could do that, he thought when he put them on. He decided he would make goggles for Zeus and Aphrodite as soon as he found Bru.
He scanned the horizon for a long while before he spotted it and headed downhill toward the tiny fire, as the black thing from the woods slashed out at him. He ducked and grabbed his staff to face whatever it was. The primeval fear of darkness ebbed back into Zeke’s belly, but he forced it aside and broke free. He dismounted near her fire.
“I expected you yesterday,” she said, looking at him. “What is it you wear around your eyes?”
Zeke took them off and handed them to her. “Windshield for your eyes.”
She studied the glasses for a while and smiled. “This is well done. Can you make one for me?”
“Yes, and I’ll make one for Zeus, and Aphrodite as well.”
“Zeus and Aphrodite?”
“Yeah, had to call them something other than ‘your zorse’ and ‘my zorse’. Easier, don’t you think?”
Bru just smiled and watched as Zeke created his ‘eye shields’ for a while. When he finished one he handed it to her and she tried it on. “And this material between the wood. What is it?”
“Leaves.”
She looked at him and back at the glasses. “A most interesting and useful contraption.” They sat quietly for a while before she said, “I saw that thing come at you out of the forest.”
The fear fresh in his mind, Zeke nearly wet himself just thinking about it.
“It is part of the Darkness. They are wraith-like creatures with little substance, but banded together as they were they can infect the mind with uncontrollable fear.” She smiled at him, “You did very well.”
He nearly missed the rare compliment, and even rarer smile. He grinned back at her and said, “We better get moving. I don’t want to be anywhere near this forest by tomorrow.”
It was nearly impossible to hear each other over the wind, so they traveled in relative silence. Nothing like a whole lot of white noise to make you comfortable in your own head, Zeke thought, trying to keep fear out of his head and out of his gut. He wished they could stop and rest, but his fear of the forest was fresh in his mind, so he tried a walking meditation to calm his mind, but all he kept thinking about was how sore his ass was.
“We’re nearly there,” Bru told him while they squatted side by side, huddling together for warmth and ate a cold lunch.
“Any place I can walk again would be appreciated. I’m tired of riding.”
“You will have time to recover, though not much. We still have to get to the Council as quickly as possible.”