Greyfax Grimwald (18 page)

The great creature tugged his whiskers, his eyes growing darker, and he left Otter for a while, thinking. “But now I think I remember something, but I can’t recall exactly what. It was finding nothing at all that seemed to be the most scary thing.”

Otter ignored his friend’s reply.

“Do you think I might just have let it slip my mind, Bear?”

The big animal looked startled.

“Let what slip your mind?”

“That jar of honey.”

Bear moaned softly, stroked his muzzle, and drank what was left of his bitter tea.

The sun was gone completely now, leaving the animals in the sort twilight, and a cool breeze sprang out of the dim forest, crisp with pine smells, and snowy fir and gorse, and the sweet smell of powdery snow on berry bushes. Otter’s ears flattened back and his little body began to shiver, nose up, searching the evening winds, small brown eyes all black now, and wide. He began whistling low in his throat as if in danger, and his forepaws moved quickly to cover his face from whatever he saw or heard or smelled. Bear, seeing his friend, suddenly rose up to his full height, hackles bristling, great paws opened and showing long, sharp claws, huge, powerful mouth drawn back in a menacing, terrifying snarl. He let go one long, rumbling growl that stopped the wind for a moment, and the trees in the forest cowered, and even the distant mountains halted for a breath and echoed back that raw, stark, horrible warning. Then the wind resumed, and everything was as before, and Bear looked around to his small gray friend, who had crept between his back legs, whimpering and whistling, for he had never heard his friend raise his mighty voice before in such a strange, yet familiar rumble.

Bear carefully stepped away and lowered himself to all fours.

“What was it, Otter? What frightened you so?” His hackles began a tentative lowering, and he reached out one huge paw and patted the otter gently on his soft gray back.

“It wasn’t anything here, Bear. Just when you were asking me if I remembered anything from before, I did, and I saw what it was for a moment, but it was all dark and I couldn’t see it, but I knew “it was there. And when I remembered it from before, it was here, too, and then when we didn’t find anything on our little trip up the valley, and you said that was what scared you most, it seemed to scare me. It had something to do with the light, but I don’t remember what. But I’m frightened now, Bear.”

“There, there, old man. There’s nothing here now, or at least there shouldn’t be,” and just to make sure, Bear raised himself to an even greater height, his massive head thrown back, his chest expanded until Otter could no longer see the sky above him. He then let forth such a bellow of rage and danger that the wind quit altogether and turned inside out, rustling the treetops like a cyclone and filling the canyons with a harsh, rasping shriek, and the mountains increased the rumble growl until it shook the distant seas, and the awakening stars hid their eyes for a few moments, leaving the silence that followed as still and dark as a musty, creaking dream of what no sound is like, but is when it throws off its cloak and takes the dreamer into its arms in the deepest stillness of all.

Bear’s great ears were laid back, his teeth flashed like dancing white steel fire in the darkness, and he raised his forepaws forward again, showing the dagger-sharp claws that out of old animal habit he always kept trim and properly honed until he could rake the bark off even stout oaks or ironwood trees with a simple swipe. Then there was the moon, and the stars one by one came out again, and the wind caught its breath and resumed its gentle snoring, and brought with it the smell of the sleeping, snow-blanketed forest again, and whatever it had been that was there was gone from Otter’s heart, and only a trace of his fear remained. The two friends did not speak for a while longer, for it was only polite not to speak of it, unless absolutely necessary, and even at that one must always be very careful. Finally Otter’s gray ears twitched and popped up from fiat back, and he shuffled his forepaws a few times in the snow, sniffed, stuck out his tongue, raised up on his hind paws, looked all about him, chuckled low in his throat, coughed and said, “Do you think this has anything at all to do with what Dwarf has been so worried about? Or with anything that he might have been sending us out to look for?”

Bear looked down at his little companion for a long while. “Perhaps so. Somehow I feel it does, but then you know Dwarf, always full of mysterious goings-on, and you never can get him shushed up once you get him onto his gloomy tales and lore books.” He stopped to trail his paw across his sore backside awhile. “Except I do remember an awful lot of goings-on from my time, like this, and others, and I think it must all be part of whatever it is Dwarf speaks of. There seems to be a lot more in our crossing Calix Stay than finding a new home in this valley.

“Oh, let’s put the door back up. Bear. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep unless my door is locked tonight.”

Otter looked despairingly at his door, broken and hanging by one small steel finger. And starting to move off, Otter stopped again. “I think we must talk to Dwarf tomorrow, and see what is to be done, or make some sort of plan. Something from a long time ago has come back to me, and I’m sure we must have seen it, or rather felt it tonight.”

“Or not seen it,” finished Bear, shooting a meaningful glance at his friend. “It’s always the things you can’t put your paw to that are the most frightening”

After the door was repaired and locked, Bear and Otter talked of going to the river for a late night walk, but the thought of it didn’t appeal to the friends, especially the thought of going about in the darkness that now seemed darker than before. The moon slowly slid into a vast gray-black cloud and disappeared, and after Bear had reluctantly gone home to his lair, Otter latched all the shutters, checked the door twice, banked the fire, and laid his stout little walking stick beside his hammock for a cudgel, feeling silly at the thought of it, but somehow it made him feel better that it was near.

While they slept, Otter with his walking stick and Bear with one great dark brown eye open, Dwarf awakened with a scream that he thought was a nightmare.

Froghorn Fairingay, who had been wandering across the star universes of Windameir, knew better, and leapt up in the dark room to work a spell, cursing himself for becoming so secure and not thinking anything would happen until Greyfax returned, but it was too late.

The son of Suneater and Fireslayer had come on a ray of ragged silver-edged mooonlight and taken Dwarf away into the land of cold and darkness. Froghorn, spinning around and lamenting to himself in his own tongue, felt somewhat better when he saw the Arkenchest was still safe, but it was a bitter consolation for him, and he ground his teeth in anger and frustration, full of despair that his friend had been taken to a place he knew well, and feared.

In the cold, empty room, he sat down at last, to plan and think.

Somehow, he must save Dwarf before Greyfax returned.

C
akgor, son of Suneater and Fireslayer, had waited for Dwarf’s house to darken before he moved, and in the half-light of the moon, his savage dark eyes burned in silent hatred of the warm room and all those who dwelled in light. It was only on the darkest nights one could feel his presence, and that icy finger of fear that comes then is the nearness of Cakgor,’ whose domain is terror and blackness. He roamed across the world unnoticed by most, until the evil which lived within him was rampant and spread from every corner where there were living things to infect. His special allies in this world were many, some animals, some men, all who fell under his maligned, cancerous spell. And it had been his passing that had frightened Otter, who knew of him from another time, when he was new in the world and went under another name. Cakgor had heard Bear’s great defiant war cry, and laughed to himself at the thought of how puny and helpless the bear would find himself should Cakgor reveal to him his presence in any one of his terrible forms. Sometimes he chose the wolf, such as his father Suneater, or the body of a burning wind, a cold blue figure that closely resembled a cloud of snow or sleet, but with: a great yawing mouth with long, jagged teeth that shone a vile greenish glow and eyes that were taller than high mountains and phosphorescent in all their dim depths. His dreadful laughter had rung out over the mountains, and took up the sound of tire trees rattling dry leaves, or the grating, harsh sound of sand across parched skin. His business tonight was elsewhere, and he had no time for frivolity, for anyone the Dark Queen should deem important enough to call for must indeed be a powerful enemy. He had crackled silently when he’d seen Dwarf, for surely anyone so small and insignificant could not be so dangerous as the Queen had told him. He stole as silently as a wind into Dwarf s room, froze him immobile with his frigid breath, and hoisted him up in those huge, dripping jaws and was gone, leaving only choking fumes and frozen ice fingers in his wake.

Dwarf, senseless and frozen almost solid, dreamed of disaster and catastrophes far-reaching and dreadful, and nothing would come of the Five Secrets but doom and death for all who believed in their power.

In the Palace of Darkness, great stone Bells rang out, and the great Suneater rattled the dwarf-wrought chains that bound him, made under earth by Broco’s forefathers ages before when the Circle had imprisoned Dorini and all her creations in the World Between Time, and Fireslayer, his wife, whirled her thirty heads around her great, oozing body, snarling and spitting her anticipation at such a grand defeat of the Circle. Now all they needed was the Arkenchest, and hope would be destroyed for all those upon Atlanton Earth, bringing total victory for the Darkness, and the light and warmth would be devoured and imprisoned in the cold wastes of Suneater’s ravenous hunger. And an evil air of great celebration rang dully through the dark kingdom. Theirs had been a great advance.

W
hen Otter and Bear reached Dwarf’s early on the second morning after their scouting trip, only a deserted house greeted them. Not even Froghorn the cat was anywhere around, and the room stank of sour, foul odors which made the animals’ ears lay back and their hackles rise.

“Something very bad has been here, Bear. I smell it in the air.”

“I know, I caught its scent when we came in.”

“But what would anything like that have to do with Dwarf? He’s only a dwarf, and of no importance to anyone.”

Then, catching himself quickly when Bear turned to stare at him, he said, “I mean why would anyone bother with a dwarf when there are so many more important men in the world?”

“It may have been something about what we were speaking of last night. It seems he did know more than either of us.”

“What shall we do now? Oh, Bear, what can we do? We don’t know anything at all, and we’re all alone now.”

“Just let’s think a moment. Things aren’t as bad as all that. He must he somewhere. So what we have to do is get him back.”

And Bear, as he spoke, began helping himself to a huge dice of bread and jam from Dwarf’s cupboard.

‘First let’s get our breakfast for strength, then we shall see what’s to be done.”

“Bear! How can you go fumbling around eating when Dwarf may be in grave danger?

“We can’t do anything at all if we’re starved half to death.”

Bear made up two giant sandwiches, which Otter could eat only a few bites of, and the two comrades sat down in Dwarf’s kitchen, bent low over the table talking in hushed voices and trying to plan what must be done. They got only as far as to decide Dwarf was gone, and quite possibly in danger, and that the best thing that could be done would be to find out how to get him back.

“How shall we do that?” asked Otter, wiping the sandwich crumbs from his whiskers.

“Ask someone,” replied Bear shortly, amazed at the little animal’s lack of following through on the obvious answer.

“Who?”

“Well, uh, we could, ahem, yes, cough, ahem, well.”

“You might try me,” broke in Froghorn, striding into the room, disguised in the form of a gypsy peddler.