Echoes of the Fourth Magic

Chapter 9
Blackemara

ANXIOUS TO FINISH the trek, they broke camp long before the yellow ball of the sun peeked over the lower summits of the Crystal Mountains. The forest proved rough going, though, with undergrowth piled upon undergrowth, plants bent over by the sheer weight of the tangle, crisscrossing under their feet at every step and vines hanging all about in impassible clusters. Few paths snaked through the thin and tightly packed trees-so tight together that there was simply no room for large trees to grow. It seemed to the men that all the life stripped from the soil of the Brown Wastes had taken root here in a jumble of living chaos, an upraised pillar of defiance against the perversion of the lifeless desert. The men pushed in anyway, seeking the most direct route and hoping to find some sort of path.

The hours passed more quickly than the miles, and the tangled mass of life did not relent even a bit. Exhaustion became a factor, for the men constantly had to tear themselves free from shrubs or vines that seemed to grasp at them as they passed. Sheer stubbornness kept them going, and each step brought them deeper in and lessened their desire to admit their mistake and turn back to find a route circumventing the wood. Noon was fast approaching when Billy, who was once again up in front, gave a welcomed call.

“There’s a break up ahead,” he yelled as he surged forward. The others, too, picked up their pace when they came in sight of the open area, but their hopes fell away when they came again in sight of Billy.

A dimming mist rose before him as he leaned with his back to a tree and his head down in frustration.

The others couldn’t understand until they stood beside him.

Beside him on the ledge of a deep gorge.

The cliff fell almost perfectly straight for hundreds of feet. At its base a river, swollen by the spring thaw, thrashed southward about its rocky course, sending up the fine spray. Barely a hundred yards away, the other side seemed no more than a reflection in a foggy mirror, with a cliff just as sheer and the thick forest continuing undisturbed atop it.

“Damn!” Mitchell moaned.

“We’re having one hell of a day.” Billy chuckled with lighthearted sarcasm. He looked despondently at the ravine and sighed. “No way we’re climbing down that.”

“Can’t find something you don’t look for,” the undaunted Del muttered to himself, and he determinedly disappeared into the mist northward along the ledge.

“This river obviously flows from the northern mountains,” Reinheiser said, the physicist, like Del, seeming more interested in finding a solution to the problem than in grumbling about it. But while Reinheiser based his hope on logical structure, Del was playing on a hunch, an eerie, overpowering feeling that something was needed to complete this hauntingly familiar scene.

“So?” Mitchell quipped at the unremarkable revelation.

“So,” Reinheiser continued, perturbed at the sharp reply, “judging from the line the river takes, it must intersect with the lower mountain range to the south of us.” Mitchell’s expression remained impassive, almost oblivious to Reinheiser’s attempt to right their course. The physicist’s eyes narrowed to dart-throwing slits as he went on. “Our eye level is well above the base of those mountains. So”-he emphasized the word with contempt-“the land obviously slopes down to them. A slight grade, no doubt, but sufficient to bring us down to the level of the river.”

Surprised at such an easy answer, and a bit embarrassed by his pouting, Mitchell quieted to consider the logic, when “Yeah!” came Del’s shriek.

The four startled men spun toward the sound, crouching defensively, as if expecting some approaching danger. Mitchell began to draw his sword, but Del’s subsequent shouts dispelled his fear.

“I knew it!” Del yelled in delight. “It had to be here. Hey!” he called to the others, but they were already on their way.

They came upon him suddenly in the mist, his arms folded triumphantly across his chest and a smug look on his face as he leaned on an anchor post for a railing to an old rope bridge. It stretched out, just a silhouette in the heavy spray until it disappeared altogether about halfway across the span. Even in the misty veil, the men could see that several planks were missing, and the remaining wood sounded precarious at best, creaking and groaning like an old man’s bones as the bridge swayed and rolled gently on the updrafts and swirling currents of air.

They were thrilled at the discovery anyway, for the bridge was the first sign of civilization they had encountered since the Halls of the Colonnae. Still, Mitchell had no intention of crossing the aged and rickety thing.

“How far to where the land gets low enough to cross the river?” he asked Reinheiser.

“A couple of miles, no more,” Reinheiser answered, his expression showing that he shared the captain’s apprehensions about the bridge.

“Why?” Del asked incredulously. “What are you talking about?” For Del was as certain of the bridge’s safety as he had been in knowing it would be here in the first place. Somehow it all fit together for him, like pieces of a puzzle to which he had learned the key.

“You think we’re going to cross that?” Mitchell snapped. Del shrugged as if he didn’t even understand the problem. “Well, be my guest,” Mitchell chided, then he turned to the others and added, “we can fish out his body downstream.” His grin turned sadistic as he motioned to the bridge, inviting Del to lead the way.

Del swung around the post onto the first planks, meaning to march straight across. He hesitated, though, as his senses gripped him in spinning, vertiginous fear. He snapped his eyes shut, swallowed the terror, and demanding of himself that he trust his new insight, started out.

Gaining confidence with every step, he soon passed from the other’s sight. About two-thirds of the way across, he came to a gap several feet wide where the boards had broken away. Somehow assured that he simply wasn’t meant to die now, he casually hopped onto one of the rope supports and grasped the cord rail in both hands.

But the support was slick with spray, and just as Del moved from the safety of the boards, a blast of air rushed into his face and sent the bridge on a wide swing. He leaned into the wind, using it to secure his balance, moving as if the gust was but a minor inconvenience. Unafraid, he didn’t pay complete attention to what he was doing and overcompensated for his lean. When the bridge reached the limit of its sway, it jerked back violently and Del’s feet fell free. He dangled there, stunned and terrified for several long seconds as the bridge continued to roll about and the cord railing bit mercilessly into his straining fingers. The river seemed to get louder as his senses attuned to the grim fate laid out before him.

Was I wrong? he asked himself as his grip weakened. He grimaced in anger at the thought of missing the adventure, and growled defiantly, “Not going to die now!” Swinging his legs in time to the bridge’s sway, he was able to heave one up over the rope support, and he managed to pull himself up to straddle it. Then he inched his way to the far side and rolled onto the boards. Looking over the edge at the rocks below, he repeated, “Not going to die,” less convincingly, and quickly added, “unless I get stupid!” Humbled, he continued on much more carefully, taking shorter steps and gingerly testing each board in front of him before he put his full weight on it. Soon he reached the other side and called back to his companions that it was indeed safe to cross-but with all due caution!

Fearing that the scowling captain would order them to go around the chasm despite Del’s crossing, Billy immediately sprang onto the bridge and rushed to join his friend. Mitchell shook his head and huffed angrily as Billy disappeared from sight, but with two of his crewmen going over, the captain had to relent.

“I’ll go last,” he volunteered to Reinheiser and Brady. “I’m the heaviest.”

Doc Brady was of a different opinion.

“Let me go last,” he insisted. And he finished his thought silently, Today I die anyway, and if it’s to be here, then let the rest of you all be across before the bridge falls.

Disgusted at being upstaged by Del, Mitchell didn’t care enough to argue with Brady. The doctor was relieved that he wouldn’t be endangering the others and at the temporary stay of his expected fate, but all too soon Reinheiser and the captain were across the gorge, calling for him. For many minutes Brady stood frozen in fear, unable to take that step.

“Hurry up!” came Mitchell’s snarl. “Or we’ll go on without you!”

On the planks now, his breathing coming in short puffs, and beads of sweat cold on his forehead, Brady forced himself ahead. It didn’t get any easier, his terror heightening with every step to the point that he almost wanted to just throw himself off and get it over with. And yet, before he knew it he was on the solid ground of the other side, surprised, but nearly faint with relief.

With the gorge behind them, they continued on in even greater anticipation. Shortly after noon they emerged from the wood to a disheartening sight.

They had come to a meadow of tall swaying grass. The land before them sloped down a long grade as it continued to narrow, and at the bottom was a second wood, this one dark and gloomy. North and east the great mountains towered over the low ground, and to the south a high ridge of gray stone, as if the land had split apart, blocked their way. The ridge ran eastward, curved north for a short distance, and then turned back toward them again along the base of the northern mountains, forming a horseshoelike ring around the dark wood.

“A box canyon,” Mitchell groaned over a chorus of sighs.

“Just a minor delay, Captain,” Reinheiser said. “All we need do is double to the southwest and find where the ridge starts. It can’t be far. We should be up on that plateau in a few hours.” But Mitchell had once again grown angry and frustrated at this whole business, and his stubbornness overruled reason. His retort startled Reinheiser and all the others.

“We’re not doubling back,” the captain fumed. “Not yet. There might be a way through that wall ahead, a tunnel or something. Or maybe it’s climbable. I want to know for sure before we waste the rest of the day going backward!”

“But Captain-” Reinheiser began.

“No arguments!” Mitchell yelled. “You don’t even know if we can get back across the damn river without using that rope bridge again. You want to do that? That thing in the hall said go east. We go east!”

“I don’t know,” Del said. “I don’t like the look of that forest.” But Del’s disagreement only strengthened Mitchell’s resolve and he started off down the slope, ripping aside the tall grass as he went. Del wanted to argue further-somehow the mere sight of the wood below them offended his senses and promised danger-but the thought of facing Mitchell again made his jaw and nose throb with the acute memory of pain. He shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and followed with Brady and Billy.

Reinheiser hesitated, though. He stood for a few moments petting his goatee and considering the captain’s tirade, amazed that Mitchell had turned on him with such anger. “You should not have spoken to me like that,” he muttered under his breath. And with a wicked chuckle that warned of retaliation, he started after the others.

The sun all but went away when they entered the dark forest, with huge black trees bent nearly in two by thick strands of gray-green moss forming an unbroken roof above them. Though it was springtime in Aielle, no vibrant colors of fresh-blossomed petals decorated this landscape. Perhaps it was due to the dim light, but Del sensed that even in full sunshine this wood would remain dreary with decay. It seemed to him that the life about them had gained dominance in a past age and refused to relinquish it to new growth. There was no rebirth here, no seasonal cleansing. Even the scent of the few flowers had long ago gone stale.

Though there was little undergrowth and no tall grass, the path remained difficult. Knotted roots crossed every course, twisted from the ground as the ancient trees leaned wearily, and many were too large to step across, forcing the men to climb over or crawl under them.

Eventually the group came to a wide expanse of towering ferns, as tall as a man and taller, with stems nearly an inch thick. Still not daring to argue with the determined captain, they reluctantly drew their swords and hacked their way through.

Out of the corner of his eye Del saw a squirrel the size of a small dog leaping across high branches. It didn’t seem out of place, not here in this grandfather of woods, so Del brushed it off with a shrug and made no mention of it. He understood now the nightmarish fears of the romantic poets so far removed from the bricks and highways of his world, for all about him the trees and plants, and all the life of the wood, seemed to close in, scowling with passive yet stifling hostility. This was a place where a man could be completely overwhelmed by the vast dimensions and sheer power of nature; a place where a man could realize his own insignificance.

But unlike Del, Mitchell had no time nor heart for such reflections. The dismal surroundings and the fern barrier only made him grit his teeth and push on harder. He hacked mightily with his sword, leveling fern after fern, driving the men ever deeper into the black shadows of the decrepit wood.

Then the insects came. Mosquitoes mostly, biting them and buzzing in their eyes and ears and flying up their noses, making this leg of the journey even more miserable.

The ground was getting softer under their feet.

Reinheiser and Billy understood the signs and they both fully expected what lay ahead when, finally, Mitchell cut through the last line of ferns and found himself on the muddy bank of a swamp. It meandered lazily about the trees ahead, great pools of black water sweating wispy vapors into the already rank air. Stillness surrounded the men, but it was an uneasy, anticipating silence, like a predator’s hushed crouch before its spring.

Following Mitchell, they labored on as best they could, but every path ended at one of the stagnant pools, and the obstructing roots were slick with slime and nearly impassable. The ground oozed mud now, threatening to swallow them up with every step.

Every time Del wiped the sweat from his forehead, he left behind a streak of mud and slime. “This is crazy,” he cried, feeling thoroughly wretched. “We should’ve turned back hours ago.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion!” Mitchell retorted, though he, too, had to realize the folly of continuing through the swamp. It wasn’t a hard puzzle for Del and the others to put together, though: stubborn Mitchell would simply never allow Del to point out his error. Sword in hand, the captain puffed out his chest and glared, daring Del to defy him.

Shaken by the threat, but determined that he was right, Del continued cautiously. “I’m just trying to point out that this place… if we get lost in here, we’re dead.” A mosquito buzzed in his eye. “And these bugs!” he added, slapping futilely at the pest.

“Listen to him, Captain,” Billy pleaded. “We had a swamp back home where I grew up, and I’m telling you, it’s a bad place to be wandering blindly.”

Mitchell snapped his menacing gaze on Billy. “What’s the matter, little boys?” he whined sarcastically. “Are the bad buggies biting you?” Then he squared his shoulders, eyes squinting in an ominous threat. “We go on!” he growled.

Del wouldn’t challenge him this time, nor would Billy, but Mitchell’s renewed fury only prompted Reinheiser. The physicist truly desired to leave the swamp and the dark wood altogether, but more than that, he wanted to test the extent of Mitchell’s defiance of his advice. “Perhaps you should listen to them, Captain,” he stated flatly.

Mitchell wheeled around as if struck.

“You, too?” he blurted in disbelief. “Again you back these two jerks. Whose side are you on?”

“This is not a contest,” Reinheiser began, but before he could elaborate, a loud splash ended the debate.

The fen before them churned and bubbled, its gray ooze rolling in sickening contrast to the pale whiteness of the frothing. Then as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had started, it stopped, the rancid water quickly settling to flatness under the weight of its muck. In a second only a widening ring of dissipating ripples hinted at a disturbance under the mirror smoothness of the pool. The men sensed a presence-close, under the surface-and knew they were surely being stalked. In frozen terror, they awaited the wild rush of water of the expected charge.

It didn’t happen like that. The creature came slowly, deliberately, confident of the inability of its prey to escape. Without causing even a ripple, almost as if it were an extension of the fen itself, a head appeared out of the dark water, a great lizard head with a forked tongue flicking between long, pointed teeth and bulbous black eyes, slitted yellow.

Oh, those eyes! Del thought. Horrible and mesmerizing all at once! He mustered up all of his willpower and managed to break free of their binding gaze. Nearly limp with terror, he somehow managed to grasp the hilt of his sword.

The lizard monster rose from the fen and reared up on its hind legs, lean and sinewy and very tall-even twenty feet away it towered over the men. It almost seemed to grin as it looked down at them, sizing up its dinner and swaying slowly, hypnotically, back and forth. And all the while, its wicked little forelegs twitched in anticipation of the juicy morsel they would soon hold steady for its great maw.

Most frightening of all were the creature’s “whips.” Two tentacles, twin serpents they seemed, protruded sideways from its shoulders, hanging down its side all the way to disappear into the dark water. Del couldn’t tell how long they were, for most of their length was hidden beneath the mere, but he did get a look at the end of one, a nasty barbed hook, as it broke out of the water for an instant in a menacing twitch.

“Good God,” Del muttered, and he drew his sword, preparing to meet his doom.

“Do we try to run, or fight?” he asked softly, trying not to spur the monster to action.

“Well?” he said louder, panic in his voice when he received no reply. He glanced over to his right. There stood Billy, Mitchell, and Reinheiser, staring blankly ahead, transfixed by the gaze of the loathsome beast. Over at Del’s left, Doc Brady, too, stood immobile, held fast by the bulbous eyes.

“Hey! Hey!” Del yelled, shoving Billy Shank, who was the closest to him. But the lizard’s eyes held Billy so firmly that he didn’t even blink.

A voice inside Del’s head, his instinct for self-preservation, told him to run. He resisted, unable to leave his friends in this predicament. He was obviously no match for the monster, but figured that if he could hurt it, the lizard might just settle for him and leave the others alone.

Del sucked in his breath and prepared to attack. Truly, he wanted to charge, but again that basic instinct for survival refused to let him rush to his death.

Now it was the creature’s move, and Del watched anxiously as one of the tentacles began inching out of the water, arcing up behind the shoulder slowly, teasingly, until the barbed claw just cleared the water. Then crack! came the snap of the whip, and the tentacle rocketed off past Del’s left and slammed into Doc Brady’s chest, tearing through flesh and bone to explode out of the man’s back, its barbs catching fast on a piece of vertebra in the splintered backbone. So quick and clean was the blow that Doc Brady never moved. Nor did the expression on his face change. He just plopped facedown in the muck, and the beast began reeling in its skewered quarry.

“Doc!” Del screamed.

Its meal secured, the beast released the other men from its paralyzing gaze.

“Get out of here!” Mitchell ordered his remaining crewmen.

“Come on, Del,” Billy cried, grabbing Del’s shoulder.

“I’m not leaving him!” Del rasped. He shook himself free of Billy’s grasp and rushed to the body of his fallen friend, who was by then nearly halfway to the beast.

The creature was ready for Del, though, and just before he reached Doc, the other tentacle snapped. At that moment, Del stumbled on a rock and hunched over, trying to regain his balance. That slip saved his life, for the claw razed his back, severing his cloak, but it could not dig in. Del felt the burning flash of pain and then the warmth of his own blood. He dove forward into the mud and scrambled on his belly to Doc Brady.

“Doc!” he cried. “Oh, Doc!”

“Del!” Billy screamed, and took a step forward.

“That’s far enough, mister!” Mitchell roared. Billy turned to the captain, who was already backing away. “Let’s go!” Mitchell ordered.

Billy saw Reinheiser moving to safety behind a nearby root. From behind, he heard Del moaning over Brady. Faced with the same choice that Del just had, Billy, too, could not leave. He met the captain’s eyes firmly and stated, “No.”

Mitchell lunged for Billy, meaning to pull him forcibly away, but he stopped short, his face going bloodless with shock and fear as an arrow suddenly whistled by, just inches from his nose.

It wasn’t aimed at the captain. Even as the lizard readied a death strike on Del, the missile found its mark, thudding into the beast’s chest and knocking it off balance. Its tentacle fired wildly as it staggered under the blow.

“Oi, Avalon!” came a cry. Mitchell and Billy turned just in time to see a warrior charging at them through the muck, brandishing a huge sword. Billy braced himself, and Mitchell, unsure if this man was friend or foe, grabbed at his sword hilt. He never got the weapon out, though, as the warrior crashed through and bore down on the beast, his direct line sending both the captain and Billy sprawling in the mud.

The lizard began wriggling the tentacle impaling the doctor, frantically trying to free itself in order to better fight this new foe. But Del saw the lizard’s intent.

“You’re not getting away!” he cried, and with a great fury he brought his sword down on the tentacle.

The monster tried its other tentacle again, but the warrior had rushed too close and just pushed it harmlessly aside before it could snap. On he charged, the beast responding with a defiant snarl, as if it remained unafraid, believing itself more than a match for any man.

But this warrior was no ordinary man. He moved right in, deftly dodging the biting maw’s initial attack, and snapped his sword against the lizard’s side, just under its foreleg, his agility and speed surprising the beast, though for a moment it remained unhurt as its scaly armor easily repulsed the blow. The warrior stayed calm as the two squared off, taking good measure of each other. He had fought this type of monster before and knew how to defeat it.

He let the lizard be the aggressor, using his energy defensively, dodging its deadly jaws and parrying the lightning thrusts of its razor-edged forelegs. He bided his time, patiently waiting for openings, and when they came, he brought his sword to bear, always on the same spot on the beast’s side. Frustrated, the lizard stepped up its attack, but this merely gave the agile warrior even more opportunities to strike. Again and again his sword crashed in, and now with every blow the beast roared in pain.

Billy and Mitchell watched the battle in horrified awe. Reinheiser backed away a bit, further securing his escape should the monster prove victorious, or perhaps even if the unknown warrior won. Del remained blind to everything except the particular focus of his rage, hacking away with abandon at the still-twitching tentacle that impaled Doc Brady.

The lizard wasn’t standing straight anymore. It hunched to the side in obvious agony as the concentrated blows began to take their toll. Desperately the beast lunged at its foe, but tiring from its frenzied attacks and off balance from its crooked posture, it stumbled and the warrior easily dodged aside. As the beast struggled to regain its footing, the warrior had his widest opening yet, and he grasped his sword hilt tightly in both hands and hammered it into the battered scales, jolting the monster several inches from the ground. Scales splintered and flaked away, leaving the lizard’s blue, bruised hide clearly exposed. It shrieked in agony as the warrior wound up for a death blow.

But the monster wasn’t defeated yet. With desperate ferocity, it transformed all of its rage and pain into one last, vicious lunge at the man.

The warrior had figured the battle won; the sudden attack caught him off guard. He somehow managed to get his weapon up in front of him, blocking the beast’s jaws from his face, but the force of the blow snapped off the blade of his sword and dropped him on his back in the mud.

Billy gasped and started to charge, but the lizard was in control again. It waved its free tentacle menacingly and held Billy at bay.

The warrior scrambled to his feet and faced his doom. He knew he couldn’t flee; even if he managed to get ahead of the beast, its tentacle would easily find his back. His options slim, he found an inner calm and concentrated his thoughts on a final plan of attack.

The lizard looked down on the man and exhaled a long hiss, hesitating, as if savoring the moment of its victory.

A fatal mistake.

The warrior flung his broken sword hilt at the monster’s head and pulled a hand ax from his belt. As the beast raised its forelegs to block the projectile, the warrior leaped. He crashed in heavily, his free arm hugging tightly, pinning the lizard’s forelegs against its chest, while his other arm chopped away with the ax at the unprotected hide, peeling away the tough flesh with mighty strokes. The monster tried to bite him, but he was in too close and the beast couldn’t manipulate its head that way. The lizard struggled wildly to break free, but so strong was the warrior, so ironlike his grasp, that he held tight with one arm.

Dark blood gushed from the monster’s wound, staining the persistent ax and reddening the water at the combatants’ feet. The lizard managed to free one claw, digging it deep into the warrior’s shoulder and sending a stream of blood down his back. He grunted and grasped tighter and, incredibly, the flexing of his cordlike muscles pushed the claw out.

And all the while, the ax dove in relentlessly, tearing and splattering the beast’s entrails.

Then, with a final scream of agony, the lizard burst free of the hero. The man backed away a few steps, his ax held ready, but as he watched the reeling monster, its breath coming in short, labored gasps, he knew that the battle was over. With one last shudder, the beast rolled back into the mere and was swallowed by the filth from which it had spawned.