Dark Magic (37 page)

* * *

Piskin, alerted by the cries of the bloodhound, bounded out of the crib. He tried to grow a ball of blood in the air, but there was so little to work with, and the hound was spent. It had to be healed before it could be wielded. If he sated its thirst, it would become whole again.

His eyes flashed around the cabin. He went for the family cat, cutting the air with his small flashing knife, but the cat scampered away, never having trusted him. Yowling, it sprang from the window and made good its escape.

Puck cleared his throat. He still stood nonchalantly in the doorway. “We have a certain matter to discuss, changeling.”

Piskin retreated to the top of a wardrobe built of stout oak and faced the elf. He wanted to run. Desperately so. No elf had ever been born that could run down one of the Wee Folk who was bent on escape. But the problem was the hound. He had come to love it so. He could not leave it behind for the cold hands of this interloper. Nor could he carry it at full speed.

Piskin glared at the elf, who stood with a strange smile on his face. There was no warmth in that smile.

“What do you want, elf?” demanded Piskin, deciding to bluff it through. “Have a care here, I’m welcome in the Haven, and you’re not.”

“Indeed?” said the elf. He leaned nonchalantly against the doorjamb. From his fine-fingered hand a long, thin blade dangled. He looked as if he hadn’t a care, but Piskin knew better.

Piskin’s eyes went to hound, where it crawled pitifully to the bottom of the wardrobe upon which he stood. Still in the guise of the babe, he hopped down and bent to tend it. He could not help himself. He took up a knitting needle and jabbed his palm. Wincing, he let the beast lick the trickle of blood that came from his hand. But it was not enough. The hound’s eyes brightened, but it didn’t regrow its hindquarters.

The hound could not truly die, Piskin knew. Perhaps, it wasn’t even truly alive. If one were to take the thing and shave it down to a single ruby eye, plucking each strand of flesh from the Red Jewel at the heart of it, it would still grow back. With enough blood applied, the entire hound would regrow, to whimper and stare disconcertingly again.

Piskin eyed the only available source of such a large amount of blood, the elf himself. The elf, for his own part, had not moved. He still stood in the doorway, watching.

“I demand retribution!” Piskin shouted, growing in confidence. “Extend your arm, so I might achieve well-deserved satisfaction.”

“You wish to take some of my blood?”

“Of course. As payment for your abuse of my hound.”

The other took a step forward. Piskin glared at him. Something in the elf’s eye, however, gave him pause.

“Wait!” he said, backing up and hopping onto a dresser. “I wish you to simply leave. I’ll mark no debt for this, if you get out now.”

The wintery smile stayed fixed. The elf took two steps closer. The bloodhound curled its lips at the approaching feet. “Very generous of you, but you see, I must decline.”

“Who are you, elf?”

“I am known as Puck.”

Piskin’s eyes flew wide. For a second time, the urge to run almost overcame him. He hopped back to the floor, scooped up the hound and stood fast, his tiny blade in his hand. He tucked the bloodhound under his arm. The other approached, and finally Piskin recognized the look in the elf’s eye. It was the glint of murder.

In the manner of all his folk, Piskin began the fight with evasion. A wild session of bounding about commenced. He knocked over brooms, tore curtains and swung from the hanging lamps. Puck lay about him, slicing air, sheets and jars of fruit preserves with abandon.

Normally, he could have evaded the elf, but Piskin’s every leap was slow. His shorn-off hound splattered blood and weighed him down. He tried to dash in and slash the elf, going first for the calves, next for the wrist. But ever was he slowed too much by the weight of the hound.

He never even thought of dropping it. The hound had too much of a grip upon his mind for that. Instead, he only wanted to wield it. He needed blood, and he preferred the source to be the elf. Such were his only thoughts.

Then the maid, her apple-cheeks red in horror, entered the doorway and screamed. She saw the unthinkable. A nightmare from which there was no waking. Her babe bounded about the house, making impossible leaps with every step. Blood was everywhere, spraying from the stray hound she’d taken in. A tall, thin stranger in the middle of her floor moved with almost as great an impossible rapidity as the babe, slashing her house to ribbons. His sword followed each flying leap of the infant, each stroke a moment too late.

She fainted dead away at the threshold.

The elf glanced at her, giving Piskin his chance. He landed upon her soft back and thrust his blade into her neck. Blood spurted and she moaned, putting one fine hand to her throat. She coughed, but neither the hand nor her filling lungs could stop the flow of slick blood. Piskin dropped the hound there, and then went back to bounding about.

The hound lapped, rapidly. The stricken woman struggled to rise. She slipped in the growing slick pool of her own blood. Sensing its meal might end soon, the hound licked faster. Its tongue darted and lashed, taking every splatter from the floor as it fell. With each tongue-full, its body regrew.

Puck glanced at the hound. He gave a final slash at Piskin, then wheeled and thrust his fine blade toward the ghoulish hound. The tip of his weapon skewered the regrowing creature and it
popped
, as might any bladder filled with blood. A gout of dark gore splashed the woman and the floor.

This assault upon the bloodhound was more than Piskin could take. He leapt, hissing, upon the elf’s back. His blade plunged into Puck’s shoulder. To see another strike his beloved Red, that was too much.
The dagger rose and fell again and again. With each stab, Piskin hissed, then howled, then screamed in frenzy.

A long-fingered hand reached over the elf’s back and dragged the manling away, despite Piskin’s desperate clawing and scrabbling. Piskin’s hand, which still slashed wildly with the dagger, was taken off with a sweep of Puck’s blade.

Piskin, who had truly lost his mind and gone feral, was one-handed again. But still he reached for the elf’s throat with snapping jaws, bulging eyes and five clawing fingers. Puck welcomed the embrace, and the two strove, choking, reaching for eyes.

Before the struggle was finally over, it became dreadful indeed.

At their feet, all the while, the bloodhound licked the floor. The woman’s blood it no longer craved, as she had already passed on and her fluids had grown stale. Following its preferences, the hound drank from the growing puddles at the feet of Piskin and Puck.

Puck, the final victor, tossed Piskin’s tiny body to the floor of the place. He checked the woman’s pulse, but there was none.

He staggered to the door and away. Having had his fill of madness, vengeance and blood, he left the Red Jewel behind. The thing truly disgusted him. He needed the healing help of the nymphs in Twilight. They would provide a balm for his mind and his body.

Later, Puck never did slice Piskin apart and distribute the pieces, but he did return to the other’s unmarked grave upon occasion to relieve himself.

* * *

After night had fallen and the sun had risen freshly, another came to find the gruesome scene. Myrrdin clucked his tongue and shook his head. Such a waste of life all around. He went in search of the hound, and found it, haunting the dark root cellar beneath the house. He did not coax it, not wanting such a vile thing to touch his flesh and thus his mind.

Instead, ignoring the hound’s warning snarls, he found a potato in the cellar that had grown white eyes. He tapped it with his staff, and Vaul flashed its Green Eye.

He rolled the potato toward the hound, who backed away from it, growling and curling thin, crusty lips. The potato rolled to a stop, then promptly sprouted green thick vines. These growths quickly enveloped the hound, and formed a woven cage of strong, whip-like fibers. The hound scrabbled, but was caught fast within a cage of living, rustling vines.

Myrrdin eyed the hound with distaste. Brand should be told, but he would not be. Not this time. Brand was a hothead. He had brought all this upon himself and his people. But he would not see it that way. He’d ruined everything Myrrdin had worked for,
striven
for, over centuries of time. What did a man in his twenties know of
centuries?
How could he be made to understand the folly of his ways? He seemed not to grasp that
balance
was the key, not decisive victory. Humans could never hope to defeat such an implacable foe as the Shining Folk. Brand had won temporary advantage, true enough, but the game was far from over and there would be a terrible price to pay for his overreaching. And the people to pay the price when it came due would be the common folk. The simplest of people. They would pay with blood as they had in this tiny hut along the river.

So worked up was the old wizard that he began to speak to the hound, to lecture it with a wagging long forefinger. The hound, for its part, narrowed its beaming ruby eyes at the finger, and snapped at it, growling from deep within.

“You’ll not decide the fate of the world with your idle whimsy. Not this time, Brand. You would not do what must be done! You would not return the Blue to its rightful owner, and thus buy peace. The blood of this young family is upon
your
head. Not mine!”

The bloodhound, perhaps taking his words as threat or mockery, chewed at the squirming vines that formed the bars of its cage.

“You swore never to slay one so vile as Piskin, just to save yourself? Very well then, I owe you nothing in this matter. I wash my hands of it. The hound may have fallen into my possession within the borders of the Haven, but it is my prize now, to distribute as I will.”

Myrrdin lifted the cage and slung it on his back, careful the hound couldn’t bite him. He carried off his prize, lamenting the dark way it was gained. He muttered to the hound and the stars as he marched. The darkness swallowed him up as he left the Haven.

Chapter Sixteen

The Hound Thirsts

Oberon knew of Myrrdin’s return to the Great Erm. But he sent out no scouts, no greeters, no simpering nymphs nor honor guards of elf bowmen. He let his son come, unchallenged and unheralded.

The Great Erm had changed in character by the time Myrrdin arrived. Once a pristine wilderness, it now teemed with elves. Normally, even elves shunned the looming trees and the massive creatures that dwelt here beneath them. None relished being crushed by the hoof of a startled stag that stood a hundred feet high. But the spot excelled for the purpose of raising an army in secret. None came here, and with nymphs posted at every bordering tree trunk in a huge ring, few of the giant beasts of the Erm wandered into the camps.  For added security, the elves had woven a massive net of living thorns. Each loop of the net was wide enough so an elf could walk through without stooping, but
the weave was tight enough to stop the huge animals of the forest.

In the center of the netted region lay a faerie mound, serving as an easy exit point to the world of the enemy. The twin to the mound, a stone plynth built for the express purpose of bloody sacrifices millennia ago, stood in the Deepwood near the Kindred town of Gronig. None visited the site in either world, not in Cymru nor the Twilight Lands. The remoteness assured Oberon that his troops could be mustered and armed discreetly.

He had started by gathering a great number of smiths. His people were not fond of work, but they were skilled craftsmen when properly motivated. The motivation portion of the formula, naturally, had proven to be the tricky part. To provide his fickle people with the drive to obey him, Oberon had worked hard upon their injured pride. He promised them a return to their proper status, to their capricious ways. Once again, the humans would swoon upon sight of them! The best maidens of every hamlet would be their playthings, the bright-eyed children would be theirs to lead astray.

These promises were just what the elves wanted to hear. For them, the world had become tiresome and dreary without the youth and innocence of the younger races to prey upon. Being ageless became a chore after a few dozen centuries, and had recently become a positive burden of purposeless existence for many of the Fae. Deprived of their dances, their festivals and their victims, they had lapsed into a sullen state, even as had Oberon himself.

Oberon understood their malaise. They needed, above all else, a new purpose. Returning things aright, bringing back the glorious days of the past, these were worthy goals they well understood. And so, he motivated his indolent people with promises of even more vast indolence to come. If they would but work in a sweating frenzy now, if they would but march with him to destroy their enemies, all could yet be set right. Decadence would return. Idle cruelty and tinkling laughter would rule the Twilight Lands again, and every child in Cyrmu would quiver upon hearing the sound.

Oberon’s second motivator took the form of a dark rumor, which he spread far and wide with the aid of a thousand whispering wisps. It played upon every elf’s natural fear of the Kindred. The stumpy oafs were normally nothing but a stubborn nuisance, but with a monarch to lead them, the purposeless, near-idiot folk came to life like a serpent with its head sewn back on. Things were far different in both worlds when the Kindred awoke and took up their collective axes. They took on, as a folk, a sinister cast. This ancient fear worked very well as a goad, and using these two levers he gathered his folk in secret beneath the great trees. He gathered them, and he got them to labor.

And so the smiths hammered, and the fletchers fletched, and the bowyers bent yew to meet cords of thick sinew. The first task they’d undertaken was the production of all the promised armaments for his allies. Countless enchanted weapons were produced, with a speed impossible for a mortal folk. Oberon gave out lances, daggers and black-tipped darts to the kobolds, goblins and Merlings respectively. These three primitive folk now stood well-armed and ready. They would march with him.

Only two armies still were not ready to march. Firstly, the gnomes had stipulated that he produce proof he had real magic, which to their stone minds meant he must be seen to wield one of the Jewels. In that direction, Oberon’s thoughts turned murderous. Piskin had never delivered the Blue. In fact, when he reportedly managed to gain the Red, he had immediately selected a babe and robbed a crib, returning to his roots as a changeling. So much for the manling’s talk of righting of past wrongs.
Wee folk!
He could spit the words.

The second missing army had never truly been his. He had never been certain he could gain their support, and had never counted upon it. Worse, he had been equally unsure he
should
gather the Dead to his banner. In truth, Arawn had given him a slight chill. He didn’t like dealing with the Dead, not in their own cold strongholds, certainly. Even the ageless could die, and thus feared the Dead.

So it was, when his errant son Myrrdin arrived bearing none other than the Red Jewel itself, Oberon’s worries slid from his ancient face. He looked young again, like a boy of the Haven just beginning his fourteenth summer. A smirk slipped over his face, and bubbled up into a grin. As unreliable as Piskin was—like every Wee Folk—Oberon found his own seed to be the opposite.

“Myrrdin!” he shouted the greeting, throwing his arms wide. He flipped high and landed upon the reddish crest of a massive toadstool twenty feet up.

Even Myrrdin’s brow shot up, impressed by such a bound. He laughed to be so greeted, and smiled with half his face. “Have you become half Wee Folk, sire?”

Oberon shook his head. “Don’t mention Wee Folk to me today.”

“Ah,” said Myrrdin, sliding the hound from his back in its vine cage.

Leaves rustled and the bloodhound gave a small growl. Oberon watched the hound intensely, with an unblinking stare. Clearly, it had not been attuned.
Perfect
, thought Oberon.

Myrrdin grunted and stretched upright. “The thing is an unwholesome weight, even when caged on one’s back. But about your dislike of Wee Folk...”

“Yes?” lilted Oberon, his eyes still adhered to the hound, which watched him balefully. Of all the Jewels, he liked it the least, save possibly for the Black. But in hard times, such niceties were best set aside.

“I’m not sure what you might have heard. But Piskin is no more.”

Oberon nodded, unsurprised. For any creature to pass on one of the Jewels normally required its death. He had been a rare exception, losing the Blue Jewel due to base theft. But still, every day, Lavatis preyed upon his mind.

“Did you—” said Oberon slowly, “perform the necessary deed yourself?”

“No, no,” said Myrrdin, shaking his head, which needed a shave. “I merely gathered that which was left behind.”

Oberon hopped down from the mushroom and took two smooth paces closer. “And so, what plans do you have for the hound?”

Myrrdin watched him closely. “I wish to buy something with it, father.”

The elf lord’s lips pushed outward. “And what would that be?”

“Peace. Peace for both the peoples I call my own. I would have the River Haven and the Twilight Lands—even the Kindred, all live in peace.”

“A noble goal.”

“Indeed. I wish to gift you the bloodhound, father. But only if you swear right here, with all your folk as witness, to disband this camp, cast down these fell weapons, and march nowhere but back home.”

Oberon met Myrrdin’s eyes for the first time. He began to circle him. He noted Vaul, which stood upright and firmly gripped. In a place like the Erm, Vaul would be strong indeed. Life magic
bulged
here.

“You make me proud, son. None of my own full-blooded Fae children have ever managed to do so much. Here you stand, master of one Jewel and bearer of a second,” said Oberon, raising his hand to the circle of elves who had gathered around. They leaned on their bows nonchalantly, but there was tension in their faces. Silently they watched Myrrdin, Oberon and the hound.

Oberon addressed them scornfully. “Who among you, my children, have not just been bested your younger brother? He, who is not so ancient as any of you. He, who is slower of limb, but no slower of wit.”

Oberon circled around Myrrdin, heaping high his praise. The other elves hung their heads and cast dark looks upon their half-brother. Myrrdin, for his part, was unused to praise of any kind from his father. He beamed and stood impossibly tall.

Oberon came close to Myrrdin then, being truly proud of him. “I want you to know, my most accomplished son, that I meant every word that I said this day. That no praise is too great for you. That you have exceeded my every expectation. You have fulfilled my fondest hopes.”

Myrrdin opened his mouth to make his thankful reply, but instead of words, only a croak came out of his lips. His eyes bulged. A coughed trickle of blood bubbled from his shivering lips.

For this father’s blade had sprouted from his back.

The blade was withdrawn and rapidly plunged in again.

At the third strike, Vaul rose up and flashed green, filling the Erm with a glare like that of a heartbeat. But Oberon swept the staff away and knocked it to the ground. Myrrdin had not the time or strength to summon its power, such was the completeness of his surprise and the speed of his sire’s attack.

Five times, then six, and finally a seventh strike plunged home.

The wizard sagged down and Oberon snapped his fingers, gesturing to the vine cage with the growling red-eyed hound inside. The other elves, their faces twisted in disgust, brought the thing close so that it might drink the spilled liquids with its darting tongue.

“You see, son,” said Oberon, his face as kindly as it could ever be. He knelt beside the gasping old man and tousled his locks. “There is something that perhaps you don’t know. The bloodhound favors a certain variety of blood for attunement, and you are one of the few beings that can provide it.”

Myrrdin struggled to form words. But his eyes darkened, and his lips turned blue, and his mouth would not operate.

Oberon kissed him then, for the first time in perhaps a thousand years. “There, there,” he said. “Sleep, my son. When I have attuned the Red, I will heal the hurts I’ve performed upon your body this day—if not the hurts upon your mind.”

The lapping sounds of the bloodhound’s tongue became suckling noises.

“Sleep, son. The hound thirsts.”

* * *

Brand received a scroll from Gudrin. He hesitated before opening it. Telyn eyed him, as did Jak. They had been discussing with great animation their plans for his wedding, which would be held not on Rabing Isle, but rather on the Riverton Commons, so that all who wanted might attend. Already, the Rabing fortune had been used to help rebuild Riverton. Now, at the grand event of the Summer Solstice wedding, the treasures from the Everdark would be dipped into again. There was still plenty to be had, fortunately.

Brand held the scroll in his closed fist. He considered crushing it and tossing it into the fire unread. The manling who had brought it pretended to care not a whit, standing as he did upon the mantle inspecting his overly-long nails. But everyone else present watched closely.

Brand sighed and unrolled the scroll. There had never been another option, of course, but he had enjoyed pretending he could do otherwise. Sometimes, in positions of great responsibility, he reflected, power limited one’s actions and choices rather than widening them.

The scroll was in Gudrin’s spidery script. The corners of the parchment were scorched, he noted with some concern. Had she trouble controlling the Orange still?

Lord Rabing,

The Kindred have a Queen. This document is therefore official, and represents the will of all my folk, embodied as it is within my own person.

I’m afraid I must ask a terrible thing of you, friend. I must ask that you march with your axe, and all of your blue cloaks you can spare
, to my aid. You know that I would never ask this were it not absolutely required. I will not write down any knowledge I have of those that oppose us, save to say they are strong and numerous.

Awaiting your arrival expectantly,

-Queen Gudrin of the Kindred

P. S.
- Bring along that runabout Tomkin and all his folk you can gather.

The manling on the mantle, who had all along feigned great disinterest until the very moment Brand opened the scroll, chuckled as he read this last. He had carefully situated himself so he could read over Brand’s shoulder.

Brand turned to him. He lifted the rolled up scroll to him. “Relay this to Tomkin, if you would be so kind.”

The other nodded, took the scroll and bounded out an open window.

“She asks for help?” asked Telyn, keeping her voice even with difficulty.

He looked at her, knowing how disappointed she must be. If he marched now, less than a month before their wedding date, the odds were not good he would return in time to meet their carefully worked out plans.

“I must go. I will take the militia with me.”