Nature's Servant (10 page)

Sestin’s voice rose above the shriek of the wind, using those mind-rending syllables to command, to coerce. The hole stretched even further, wide enough for a man to step through, and a dark shape loomed on the other side, hungry to press through and destroy the being who dared to summon it. The hole bulged as the dark creature pushed its way through, until what looked like a heavy head and bulky shoulders emerged over a body that tapered away to nothing. Its face was undistinguishable from the rest of its black body except for two even blacker pools of darkness, swirling with power. Those baleful eyes fixed hatefully on Sestin, and another gaping hole, as dark as its eyes, opened wide in the lower part of its face as it hunched its shoulders and howled.

The mind-ripping sound would be enough to threaten a normal man
’s sanity, but Sestin was prepared for it, binding the demon in stinging, painful hexes designed to contain and control the rabid creature. The Bale-beast, for that is what it was, fought against him, trying to shake off the hexes that were bringing it into subjugation, but Sestin piled on layer after layer of spell-work, binding it to his will. The Bale-beast made one last effort to resist him, but Sestin sent a massive shock of pain blazing through the lattice of binding hexes, lines of power that covered and constricted it like burning chains, and finally it gave in, bowing its head in submission to its master.

Sestin smiled, sealing off the hole into the underworld. Creatures from Hell only understood the language of pain and power, and they were his to command. He
’d have to spend a while recovering from such costly spell-work, and then he’d summon another, and then another, until there were five. He whispered to the creature, binding it with added compulsions. He showed it the North, and the tribespeople of Eagle’s Roost. He drew its attention to their shamans, practicing their primitive form of magic.

“Go and feed, my servant. Fill yourself and bring them horror. But do not return to me until you are replete; until you are a Darkman.”

The Bale-beast howled again, but this time with hunger and anticipation, and slid heavily from the room.

…

As Gaspi travelled with Hephistole, he was glad the chancellor was sensitive enough to avoid conversation for a while, and they journeyed in silence until he felt the tide of his emotion begin to recede. It was stupid really. He knew it was only for three months, but when it came to Emmy his feelings were often overwhelming. Thinking of her just made him feel upset again, so he pushed her out of his mind and settled down in his seat, watching the scenery as it passed.

“
So how far is it to where Heath lives?” he asked, breaking the long silence.

“Two days travel,” Hephistole answered, slipping into conversation as if they’d been talking comfortably the whole way along.

“So we have to stay somewhere overnight?”

“
Sorry, call it three days, two nights,” Hephistole clarified.

They travelled on through the day, moving westwards across the plain. An old wagon track ran alongside the river, leading them towards the distant mountains, and the further away from the city they got, the wilder the terrain became. Cultivated fields slowly gave way to hard grasses and dense gorse bushes, and the track was developing more than a few pot holes.

As the afternoon drew on towards evening, they passed through a small village. Gaspi expected Hephistole to stop for the night, but he drove the horses right on through and passed back out into the wilds.

“Er…where are we stopping for the night?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” the chancellor answered infuriatingly. Gaspi tried to pry more information out of him, but Hephistole was having none of it. It was getting late and he couldn’t see another village anywhere along the path ahead of them.

As dusk was settling in, Hephistole pulled the cart off the main track and steered them up a trail barely wide enough for the cart to pass through.

“Where are we going?” Gaspi asked, peering with some bewilderment up the hill they were climbing.

“
Almost there,” Hephistole said, but wouldn’t explain any further. The horses pulled them a little further before they turned off the trail and stopped by a small grove of trees. Gaspi looked around in confusion.

“Is this it?” he asked, staring at the grove, which was nothing more than a cluster of trees with a stream running through it.

“This is it,” Hephistole confirmed with a knowing smile, stepping down from the cart. He entered the grove and sat on the ground with his back against the largest tree, looking at Gaspi expectantly.

“We could have stopped in that village!” Gaspi said, trying not to let his irritation show.

Hephistole chuckled to himself. “Okay I’ll come clean,” he said. “I want you to get a bit of practice. You’ll be living very simply with Heath, so you’d better get into the spirit of things as much as you can. Druids are quite wild, you know, preferring to be outdoors rather than living under a roof.”

“Oh,” Gaspi said, speculating without much pleasure. Sleeping rough for three months would not be much fun.

“I also can’t help feeling a little curious,” Hephistole continued. “What can a Nature Mage do? My challenge to you is to make this grove as comfortable as possible without damaging the environment for the things that live in it.”

Gaspi looked around speculatively and broke into a smile. Maybe this wasn
’t such a bad idea after all.

“
I’ll give it a go,” he said, looking around at the grove to see what he could do. The first thing he noticed was that although the branches spread out broadly overhead, they only partly covered the grove, and if it rained they’d still get wet. Making a watertight shelter seemed like a good place to start. With Hephistole watching on, he stretched out with his senses, tuning into his environment. The flood of sensory input he received was so great he almost let go of his power. It was teeming with energy - much more than he’d ever sensed in the city! There was an abundance of life in the soil, coursing up through the roots and trunks of trees.

He reached out to that life and teased it upwards, causing it to flow even more fulsomely up the tree trunks and along the branches. He directed the energy carefully, stimulating growth all through the canopy. All around him, branches sent out tiny shoots, thickening the cover over his head. Buds appeared on the new growth, swelling and unfolding into fresh greenery. He withdrew his power and looked at the canopy critically. Spotting a couple of areas where it was a bit patchy, he fed energy into the nearby branches, causing new growth to fill in the spots he’d
missed. When he was done, the covering was lush and thick all over.

“Wonderful!” Hephistole enthused. “I wish I could do that!”

Gaspi glanced at him, smiling. One of the things he liked about the Heppy was how little he cared about acting as a chancellor might be expected to. Here he was, one of the most powerful arch-mages in the land, enthusiastic as a child shown a new trick. It seemed strange to him that the powerful chancellor couldn’t do things that came so naturally to him, but he supposed that’s what came with being a Nature Mage. 

“We’ll need some warmth, and something to cook on,” Hephistole said, interrupting his thoughts. “Can you magic us up a fire?”

“I reckon,” Gaspi answered, eyeing the branches and kindling that lay generously around the grove. He had manipulated fire before but he’d never actually created it, and even a fire summoned by a Nature Mage would need something to consume. Anyone who’d grown up in Aemon’s Reach could build and start a fire, so he started gathering twigs from around the clearing and built a small pyramid in the centre of the grove, structuring the kindling in such a way that it would get plenty of air. He piled larger branches off to the side before considering how to create the fire itself.

When the villagers of Aemon’s Reach started fires, they cut a groove in a branch, and used a bow to draw a length of coarse bowstring rapidly back and forth. The string quickly made the wood very hot, and when it began to smoke, the bow was removed and a small amount of moss placed in the heated groove and blown on until it started to smoulder. The small flame could then be nursed and fed until it was a fully-fledged fire. He tried to think of a way to replicate that process using magic, but nothing sprang to mind.

It occurred to him that there might be some kind of energy in the air he could draw on instead. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his senses, searching for the energy store he needed. The gentle breeze passing through the grove was a form of energy, but he quickly bypassed that in favour of a much more abundant source of energy than the wind. Even in the fading evening, the light contained a flood of energy that he instinctively recognised as a form of heat. It was everywhere! He didn’t know what to make of that, and stored it away for further thought, wanting to complete his spell while the light lasted.

Realising how easily he could use the heat energy transmitted by light to make the wood burn, Gaspi laughed out loud and opened his eyes. He spread his arms wide, palms upwards, drawing on the widespread energy flowing through the lingering sunbeams. He focussed it to a single, narrow point, just above th
e kindling. The focus instantly became red hot, appearing as a small, glowing circle of intense flame. When fiery red turned to searing white he realised that he’d drawn in far too much energy. Panicking, he directed it down onto the kindling, and a solid beam of pure white fire bolted from the glowing circle of energy, igniting the twigs in a moment. A high-pitched yelp and a scuffling sound from behind told him Hephistole had scrambled away from the fire. Quick as he could, he released his power, letting the energy he’d captured dissipate into the air. The small pyramid of twigs had been burned to ash.

“Oops,” he said, turning to face Hephistole with an apologetic grin. Hephistole was still on the ground, frozen in mid-scramble, his robes in disarray around him. Gaspi tried to suppress a smile but couldn’
t help himself, and burst out laughing. Hephistole hesitated a moment, and then let out a great bark of a laugh, arranging himself into a more dignified position.

“
I’d say that was a success, wouldn’t you?” he asked, chuckling to himself.

“That was brilliant,” Gaspi said, thinking about the beam of fire he’d summoned
.

“How did you do it?” Hephistole asked.

Gaspi wondered where to start. “One of the things I can do is sense natural energy,” Gaspi started. Hephistole nodded thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of energy in the wind,” Gaspi continued, “or there’s a kind of energy in the soil that I can draw on to help things grow.”

“Amazing,” Hephistole said, a note of reverence in his voice.

“But what I hadn’t worked out until today is that light is full of energy. It feels like heat. I can’t explain it,” he said.

“Neither can I,” Hephistole said, “but I think you’
re right, if you’re saying that enormously powerful spell came from the energy stored in simple rays of light.”

“Yeah it did,” Gaspi said. “I’
m not even tired. I just drew in the energy and focussed it over the kindling.”

“It sounds like you’
re onto something there Gaspi,” Hephistole said seriously. “That focus turned all that loose energy into something much more powerful, and it didn’t even cost you much to do it. Just imagine what that would do to one of those demons we struggled so badly against last year.” Gaspi’s eyes widened as he considered the implications. “One to think about,” Hephistole said, and then the serious mood lifted. “We still need a fire young mage,” he said. “But try not to frazzle us this time!”

Gaspi grinned and started collecting twigs again from round the grove, building them into another pyramid. When he was done, he readied himself to try once more. Reaching out with his senses, he tuned into the energy that remained in the fading light. Drawing on it much more sparingly this time, he recreated a focus over the pyramid of twigs, and slowly fed power into it. The focus started to glow gently as power was gathered, and he released the contained energy all at once, directing it down into the twigs. The kindling ignited immediately but was not consumed this time, burning merrily in the wake of his spell. He smiled with satisfaction and relinquished his hold on the magic. He set about collecting some small branches from his pile, and started to feed and build his fire.

“Very good,” Hephistole said. “You could probably use even less power than that but that second attempt showed a decent degree of control.”

“
Thanks! Anything else you want?” he asked cheekily.

“Something comfortable to sleep on?” the chancellor speculated.

“Sure,” he said, adding a couple of medium-sized branches to the now stable fire. He thought for a moment about summoning hundreds of birds and getting them to pluck out a few feathers each, but that seemed a little extravagant, and besides, he had a better idea. He ran his senses through the soil of the grove, looking for something specific, and there it was - moss, growing thinly among the grasses. Choosing two spots that were clear of tree roots, he touched the moss with his mind and fed power into it. As the magic flowed, the moss started to grow, emerging from its grassy hiding place and swelling until there were too large, raised mounds of it in the clearing.