Shadow Blizzard (2 page)

“But who set up these traps?” Lamplighter asked, shifting his terrible two-handed sword from his left shoulder to his right.

“Who knows?” said the elf with a cunning smile, looking down at the short man. “There are too many paths to follow every one.”

“But you know where to find a trap like that!” said Mumr, determined to get an answer to his question.

“Just a little magic—that’s all there is to it,” said the swarthy elf, adjusting the s’kash behind his shoulder.

Egrassa was clearly not prepared to share the secrets of his people with outsiders.

Once, after Kli-Kli sank up to his chest in a swamp (when he got the bright idea of wandering away from the path) an elk came out onto the path in front of us. It was a king of the elk, with horns more than three yards across. The beast sniffed at the air, glanced at us indifferently with its huge velvet eyes, and trotted off briskly into the young fir trees. Hallas grunted in annoyance and regretted he hadn’t thought of felling the massive beast.

“What a feed of meat we’d have had then.”

Deler laughed merrily and said that all the gnome’s brains must have gone onto his beard, or he’d realize what a bad idea it was to tackle a huge monster like that.

All day long birds chirped and twittered and sang in the branches of the trees. When we lay down for the night the oak trees whispered a forest lullaby to us and the owls hooted soothingly in the silence of the night. On the fourth day of our journey Miralissa said that we had to pick up the pace, and from now on our group would travel at night, too. Someone groaned quietly (I think it might have been me) but, naturally, no one took the slightest notice.

The full moon appeared in the sky, so there was plenty of light in the forest, and in any case the elves seemed to see in the dark as well as cats. Now we walked for most of the night and lay down to sleep in the hours before dawn, in order to continue on our way to Hrad Spein after midday.

It was at night that I learned about the magic of Zagraba. During the hours of darkness the forest was transformed into a world that was wild, alien, and mysterious, but very beautiful in its own way.

The dark branches of the oaks and maples were like arms, and there was a mysterious murmuring in the crowns of the trees—either the leaves rustling or some mysterious creatures talking to each other. We could hear low whispering and squeaking and faint laughter from the trees, the bushes, and the tall grass. And sometimes we were followed by the bright sparks of tiny eyes. Green, yellow, and red. The nocturnal denizens of the forest observed and exchanged opinions, but they were in no hurry to come out of their little hidey-holes and meet us.

“Who’s that?” I asked Kli-Kli in a whisper.

“You mean those little chatterers? My people call them the forest spirits. Every tree, bush, forest clearing, and stream has its own forest spirit. Take no notice of them, they’re perfectly harmless.”

“They’re small fry,” said Deler, testing one of the blades of his poleax with his thumb. “You should see the kind of forest spirits we have in the Slumbering Forest! You never know what to expect from them, but these just sit there and don’t bother anyone, they just…”

“They just watch,” Hallas concluded for Deler.

“That’s right,” said the dwarf, agreeing with the gnome for once.

But the spirits weren’t the only things in the Zagraban night. Once we saw the air in the forest burning. There were thousands of fireflies soaring between the trees, flashing with emerald, turquoise, and scarlet fire. Kli-Kli caught a dozen or so of these harmless creatures and put them on his shoulders, and for a few minutes the goblin shone like a holy character from the priests’ stories, then the glowworms got tired of riding on the royal jester and flitted off to join their brothers in the living kaleidoscope.

Night was the time of the owls, who drifted silently above the meadows in the moonlight. The birds were looking for food, listening to the sounds coming from the grass.

Night was the time of the wolves—we heard them howling in the distance several times. Night was the time of creatures whose names I didn’t even know. The cries of the night birds sounded like a madman’s laughter; there was roaring, hooting, chattering, growling. All sorts of different creatures lived in the night, and they weren’t always welcoming to uninvited guests.

Four times Egrassa and Miralissa led us off the path and we hid and waited for danger to pass. The elves didn’t condescend to explain what we were hiding from in the bushes alongside the track. But at moments like that even the fidgety goblin and the argumentative gnome fell silent and obeyed all the elves’ instructions.

At night Zagraba became multicolored. The colors were bright and lush—fresh, pure emerald, delicate turquoise, icy blue, sweet fiery red, and poisonous green. Flaming auroras of cold fire filled the forest with a magical, enchanting life. The glowworms glimmered with all the colors of the rainbow, a gigantic spider’s web glinted bright blue, and the body of the spider that owned it shimmered with purple (the beast was at least the size of a good pumpkin), rotting tree stumps glowed bright green, and the veins on the emerald caps of the huge mushrooms—big enough for a grown man to shelter under during a shower—pulsed blue and orange. Pink fire wandering through the branches of willows by a lake was reflected in the water.

The cold fire of wandering lights, the bright blue sparks in the crowns of the trees, the glimmering of the forest spirits’ eyes, the scent of the forest, the grass, the damp earth, the half-rotten leaves, the fir tree needles, the resin of the pines, oak leaves, and the freshness of a stream. Whatever I might say to Kli-Kli during the daytime, I was completely overwhelmed by the incomparable, wild beauty of the Zagraban night. Although most of the time at night Zagraba was almost black, and then we had to walk by the pale silver light of the moon.

In the evening of the fifth day the narrow track winding between moss-covered larches finally led us to the Golden Forest.

“The gods be praised!” exclaimed Lamplighter, dropping his sack on the ground. “It looks like we’ve arrived!”

“You’re right,” Miralissa confirmed. “It’s only one and a half days’ march from here to Hrad Spein.”

For some strange reason, when she said that I got an unpleasant prickly feeling in my stomach. So this was it! We were almost there! What had seemed so distant that it was almost out of reach only two hours earlier was now less than two days’ journey away.

“Just an ordinary forest,” said Hallas, squinting contemptuously at the trees with the golden leaves. “The Firstborn are always making themselves out to be some kind of chosen people! Anybody would think their shit was solid gold, too!”

“I hope you won’t get a chance to ask them, Hallas,” Eel said with an ominous laugh. “The orcs are not in the habit of answering questions like that.”

“Come on, we have to keep going.” Milord Alistan took off one of his boots, shook out a stone, and pulled it back onto his foot.

The Golden Forest was called such because, as well as all the ordinary trees, the golden-leafs grew here, too. They were majestic giants with dark orange trunks and broad leaves that looked as if they were cast out of pure gold. The golden-leafs only grew here, in the Golden Forest, and their timber was highly valued throughout the Northern Lands, not to mention both of the Empires and the Sultanate. If the orcs found a woodcutter felling a golden-leaf, first they chopped his arms off with his own ax, and then they did things to him that are too horrible even to mention.

“Harold, you should see how beautiful the golden-leafs are in the fall!” Kli-Kli gushed.

“Have you been here before?” Deler asked the jester.

Kli-Kli glared at the dwarf with theatrical disdain.

“For those who don’t know—the Golden Forest is my homeland. It reaches all the way to the Mountains of the Dwarves—and that’s all of eastern Zagraba, so it’s not really surprising that I know what it looks like in the fall.”

“It’s the fall already, as a matter of fact,” I said, just to provoke the goblin.

“Early September,” the jester exclaimed with a contemptuous sniff. “Just you wait till October comes.…”

“I’d like to be long gone from Zagraba before October comes.”

“Is your home very far from here?” asked Lamplighter, absentmindedly fingering the fresh scar on his forehead (a memento left by an orcish yataghan).

“Do you want to visit?” Kli-Kli chuckled merrily. “Then you’ll have to walk for about another three weeks until you reach the center of the orcs’ territory. Then another two weeks from there to the densest thickets in the forest, and then you have to trust in luck. Maybe you’ll be able to find some goblins; of course, if they want to be found. The orcs have taught us to be wary, and in the past you humans used to hunt us with those wonderful dogs of yours.”

Kli-Kli was right there—in olden times the goblins had been treated very badly by men, who had decided that the little green creatures were terrible monsters. Before they finally realized what was what, there were only a few tribes left of what had once been a large population.

“But the history of this forest is really interesting. Is it true that this is the place where elves and orcs both first appeared?”

“Yes.” Kli-Kli giggled. “And then they went straight for each other’s throats. I think the elves even have a song about it. ‘The Tale of the Gold,’ it’s called.”

“‘The Legend of the Soft Gold,’ Kli-Kli. You’ve got it all mixed up,” said Egrassa, who had overheard our conversation.

“Ah, what’s the difference!” Kli-Kli said with a careless wave of his hand. “Tale, legend … there still won’t be peace in Zagraba as long as there’s a single orc still alive.”

“Egrassa,” Mumr said to the elf. “Could you tell us this legend?”

“It has to be sung, not just told. I’ll sing it for you. At the next halt.”

“So you’ve decided to sing forbidden songs, cousin,” Miralissa chuckled, plucking a reddish-golden leaf from the nearest tree and crumpling it in her fingers.

“But why is it forbidden?” Kli-Kli immediately asked Miralissa.

“It’s not exactly forbidden, it’s just singing it in decent elfin company is regarded as the height of disrespect. But it is sung—mostly by rebellious youths, and mostly in secret, in dark corners, in order not to disgrace the honor of their ancestors.”

“What’s so bad about it?” asked Eel, raising one eyebrow.

“It doesn’t show the elves in the best of lights, Eel,” put in Milord Alistan Markauz, who had been silent so far, “and the orcs are shown as pure white lambs. I’d bet half my land that the song was made up by men.”

“Milord is mistaken, the song was composed by an elf. A very long time ago. Have you heard it?” Egrassa asked in surprise.

“Yes, in my young days. One of your light elf brothers sang it.”

“Yes, they could do that,” said the dark elf, adjusting the silver coronet on his head. “Our relatives rejected the magic of our ancestors, so it’s not surprising that they sing such things to strangers.”

“But you promised to sing it to us!” Kli-Kli teased Egrassa.

“That’s a different matter!” the elf snapped haughtily.

Whatever the dark elves might say to anyone, relations between them and their light brethren were not problem-free.

We marched for another three hours before the elf ordered a halt. The group stopped in a meadow overgrown with small forest daisies, and the white flowers made it look as if snow had fallen. The autumn had no power over the Land of Forests. At least, not yet. We still came across butterflies and summer flowers.

There was a small stream gurgling through the roots of a broad-trunked hornbeam at the edge of the meadow, so we were well provided with water.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” Miralissa said decisively.

Alistan nodded. From the moment we entered the forest he had completely surrendered his command to Miralissa and Egrassa, and he obeyed all their instructions. One thing you couldn’t accuse Milord Rat of was a lack of brains. The count understood perfectly well that the elves knew far more about the forest than he did and he should take whatever they suggested seriously. That is, drop the reins of command when necessary.

“Egrassa, you promised us a song,” Kli-Kli reminded the elf after supper.

“Let’s get some sleep instead,” Hallas said with a yawn. “It’s the middle of the night.”

The gnome only liked the songs of his own people. Like the “The Hammer on the Ax” or “The Song of the Crazy Miners.” He had absolutely no interest in anything else.

“Not on your life!” the goblin protested desperately.

“Hallas, you’re on watch tonight,” Eel reminded the gnome. “So don’t start settling down, you won’t be getting a good night’s sleep anyway.”

“Oh, no! The first watch is yours and Lamplighter’s. Deler and me only come on for the second half of the night, so I’ll have plenty of time.”

Hallas turned over on his side, ignoring everyone else, and immediately started snoring.

“So, are we going to hear the song?” asked Mumr, who had just had the stitches taken out of his wound by Miralissa.

Thanks to the elfess’s shamanic skills, instead of an ugly scar, all Lamplighter had as a reminder of his terrible wound was a faint pink line running across his forehead.

“Yes, just as I promised,” Egrassa replied. “But it requires music.”

“So what’s the problem? I’ve got my whistle with me,” said Lamplighter, reaching into his pocket.

“I’m afraid we need music that’s rather more gentle,” said the elf, declining Mumr’s offer. “Your whistle makes too much noise. I’ll just be a moment.”

Egrassa rose lightly off the grass, walked over to his bag, and took out a small board about the size of an open hand. There were thin silvery strings, barely visible in the moonlight, stretched across the board.

“What’s that?” Deler asked curiously.

“A g’dal,” Miralissa answered. “Egrassa likes to play it when he has the time.”

Egrassa likes to play music? Well, now, I’d never have guessed. At least, I’d never seen the elf doing anything of the kind in all the time we’d been traveling together.