Prophet of Moonshae

7

"Gather the tribes!"

"War-there must be war!"

The cries of hatred and rage resounded through the lodge of King Svenyird Olafsson as the northmen decried the treacherous attack on the island of their kin. None questioned the perpetrators as other than the Ffolk.

Finally, however, the king raised a hand. The rumbling in the great, smoke-filled lodge died away as these savage seamen waited to hear what their monarch would say.

"Know you all, as do I-for most of our history, the Ffolk have been our implacable enemies. In the wars between us, quarter has not been asked nor given. I myself earned my first battle scars in raids against the west coast of Alaron!"

A chorus of assenting cries, muttered in unison, echoed the king's words.

"But for these past two decades, there has been no war between northman and Ffolk. Their king seemed to my father an honorable man." All knew it had been King Olaf himself who had represented Gnarhelm in the treaty talks with the new High King within a year after Tristan had assumed the mantle of rulership over his people.

"And King Kendrick still reigns, and reigns well. What cause should he have now to break this accord-an accord which he labored so hard, together with my kinsman Grunnarch the Red, King of Norland, to bring about?"

No man could supply a satisfactory answer.

"But the proof!" cried one.

"A talisman of the Ffolk, found at the scene of butchery!" Brandon, son of King Svenyird, shouted his own accusation. "There is no other explanation!"

"Ah, my son. As always, you are ready to lead my men to war. This is as it should be. But first you must gain the blessings of old men such as myself, and I am not yet prepared to concede that the High King of Moonshae has done us wrong."

"But would you have us absorb the hurts like old women?" Brandon demanded, angry.

"Do not forget yourself in your rage," his father admonished, and the strapping war leader bowed his head in apology.

"Forgive me, sire."

"You are forgiven. But this matter needs debate and investigation, not unproven accusations and wild plans for vengeance."

"But how?" Another gray-bearded veteran, known as Knaff the Elder, now shouted his objection. "What more proof can we gain? Do we ask our enemies for explanation?"

"Our former enemies!" barked King Svenyird. "I remind you all that most of the warriors in this council today were but beardless youths when our last war with the Ffolk reached its conclusion."

"What, then?" cried another warrior, hulking Wultha, who, like Knaff and the king, was old enough to remember those wars. Wultha's nose, broken in battle, was flattened across his face. "Surely we must do something."

"Indeed we shall. It is my intent to send an ambassador to Callidyrr, one who knows the ways of war in the event of treachery. He will take a party of men but approach the throne of the High King in peace. He will present our evidence and demand an accounting."

"But it may be a trap!" shouted Knaff. "You could be sending your man to his death!"

"I will make no command. The warlord I name shall be free to accept or decline. If he accepts, he shall know the risk, though I venture it would take more than a simple ambush to place the noose of death around his neck."

"Who? Name the man!" The questions, the cries came pouring forth from the mass of northmen.

Brandon knew the answer, and he stood as his father's old eyes came to rest-with tenderness and pride, the young man thought-on the face of his son.

"Brandon Olafsson, Prince of Gnarhelm, will you accept my commission as ambassador and journey in peace to the palace in Callidyrr, there to call upon the High King in such manner as we have discussed?"

The young warrior's pulse pounded, and his face flushed with pride. "I will hasten to do as you command, sire. If the Ffolk be honorable, I shall return in peace." He paused, bowing, before he continued with the words that he knew that warriors among his people wanted him to speak.

"But if there be treachery among them, I shall make them regret their betrayal tenfold, a hundredfold, even if it means that I must shed the blood of the High King himself!"

The king sat back in his fur-lined chair, an expression of satisfaction on his gray-bearded face. Brandon's own mind soared, inflamed and encouraged by the accolades ringing from the throats of his countrymen.

Alicia stirred restlessly beneath the heavy bearskin that served as her bedroll. Finally she abandoned all thought of sleep, rising to pace about their small camp. She, Keane, and Tavish had made a sleeping place in a flat clearing among the boulders a hundred feet from the shore of the dead Moonwell.

Now, as the moth is drawn to the light, she felt herself compelled to approach that once-sacred water.

Why had she wished so strongly to sleep here tonight? The question nagged at her, for she had no idea as to the answer-and yet it had been a very compelling desire indeed. Her two companions had seemed to sense this, for both of them seemed more relaxed and comfortable here than they had been when surrounded by the hospitality of Blackstone's hearth and table.

She looked at the water, wondering if she saw a trace of its phosphorescent glow. Her mother had told her that, in Robyn's youth, all of the Moonwells had glowed in darkness with a soft white light widely taken as proof of the benign presence of the goddess. It saddened her now to look at this brackish pond, clearly outlined before her in its circular frame of the boulder-lined shore.

But why could she see it at all? The night was inky dark around her. Heavy overcast covered the clouds, totally obscuring the moon that somehow she knew waned into its third quarter. That, too, seemed odd. She hadn't seen the moon in weeks, perhaps months, yet within her mind, she had a very clear picture of the exact stage of its phase.

Alicia approached the pond, her feet stepping surely past unseen rocks, until she found a large boulder near the water's edge that would serve as a comfortable seat. She looked upon the Moonwell with a sense of wonder. It did glow, very softly.

Lost in meditation, she didn't hear movement behind her. Suddenly she gasped in alarm.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Keane said, almost whispering, "but the night is so still I didn't wish to break the silence."

Alicia moved, making room for him on the rock. "Can you see it?" she asked, indicating the well.

"Yes."

"Is it a miracle?" she asked wonderingly.

Keane laughed, very softly. "There are things in the earth-ores, and minerals-that will emit such a glow when they are properly mixed. The effect has been known to occur in nature. That, I believe, is what we see here."

"An accident of nature? Or perhaps the workings of the goddess."

"Would that it were," he said. "But if the mightiest druids in the land haven't felt her presence in two decades, I doubt that a warrior princess would come upon that discovery here, in the midst of a dark night." Nevertheless, even as he spoke, Keane's voice sounded less sure.

"Tell me," he said, after a brief pause, "why was it so important to you that we remain out here tonight?"

"I don't kno-yes, I do. It was this water, the Moonwell. I looked upon it and I didn't want to leave."

"You've seen Moonwells before. Isn't the one in the moors beyond Callidyrr a favorite picnic spot of yours? Have you ever felt such a thing before?"

"Never." Alicia was certain of the answer. The compulsion that had drawn her here was unique in her experience. She sensed that Keane looked at her strangely. "Do I puzzle you, O wise tutor?" she asked, laughing softly. "Well, I puzzle myself as well!"

"Indeed, Princess." The man's voice was strangely hesitant, in a way she had never noticed before.

With a shocking realization, Alicia felt an abrupt awareness of Keane as a man, here beside her in this place of serenity. She liked that feeling but was vaguely frightened by it as well. Disturbed, she lowered her eyes, afraid of what he might see there even in the dark.

And yet the emotion she felt most strongly was a small inkling of delight, of a sweet discovery that came unexpectedly into her life. He did not seem so old now. Indeed, of what real significance were the eight years between them?

At the same time, Alicia realized that she genuinely cared for this man more than any other person outside her family. She trusted him, and his presence made her happy.

Did he think the same thoughts?

Keane stiffened suddenly. "What's that?"

Alicia, her mind wandering, looked at the tutor in annoyance. "What do you mean? What's what?"

Offending her still further, he placed a hand to her mouth to gently silence her. She knocked his arm aside, ready to object, when she heard the noise, too.

"It's coming closer," Keane whispered.

They heard a heavy clank, like a knight in plate mail walking across the rocky ground. Yet the noise was too deep, too resonant to come from plate mail. It was a metal thing that must have been much larger. Like the crash of a great gong, the sound rang through the darkness with vibrancy and power.

"There!" Keane sprang to his feet, staring into the darkness.

Alicia gasped, for she saw something moving along the shore on the other side of the pool. The faint glow cast the object in a soft shade of green, and she saw that it was huge-and it moved, though with an artificial kind of gait, like a poorly controlled puppet.

"A giant!" she gasped.

"Illuminatus mio!" barked the tutor. He raised a hand, gesturing to the ground before the looming figure's feet.

A cool wash of brilliance erupted, as if the rocks themselves became crystal lanterns housing wicks of bright, steady flame. The shore, the camp, the well, even the walls of the small valley, stood sharply etched in light. In the midst of it all, the two humans could only stare in shock at the apparition that towered some fifteen feet into the air.

"It's not a giant!" Keane gasped, appalled. "It's metal-a thing made by man!"

Alicia couldn't comprehend a power that could make and animate something so supremely horrifying. The object had the vague outlines of a man, walking upon two legs, with a pair of massive arms swinging at its sides. Atop its metal shoulders rested a round head, with bolted plates forming the grotesque caricature of a mouth and eyes.

A great horned helm capped its iron visage, a helm such as Alicia had seen on some of the northmen warriors who came regularly to Callidyrr. The monstrous thing looked like a giant clad in head-to-foot plate mail, though it moved with a jerking, mechanical efficiency that resembled no living thing.

A huge leg stretched forward, kicking one of the cedars into splinters. The other swung, knocking a boulder out of the way, shattering another rock from the weight of its monstrous step. Huge strides carried the clanking object around the shore of the pond straight toward them.

Desperately Alicia looked toward Keane. He gazed at the monstrosity in stupefied horror, his mouth open. The woman felt for her sword. She had left it beside the saddle up at the camp. She almost laughed aloud at the picture in her mind-her small form bashing the steel blade against this unfeeling colossus until the edge was dented and dull. Suddenly giddy, the princess knew that it was fear that consumed her, threatening to overcome her capacity for reason. The giant loomed overhead, sightless eyes staring past her. She saw the gaping slash of its mouth, the dull red of some internal heat reflecting there.

Alicia felt Keane's hand on her arm. The man had recovered his wits, and now he pulled her from the rock where they had been sitting. The princess stumbled and felt his fingers digging into her flesh, lifting her and pulling her. "Ouch!" she shouted, suddenly furious with him. Moments later, a nearby rock exploded, crushed to gravel by the thing's powerful kick. Stinging shards bit into Alicia's back.

"Run! By the goddess, run!" Keane gasped, propelling her forward, placing himself protectively behind her.

Run she did, blindly scrambling away from the horror. She stumbled and cracked her knee against a rock, she twisted an ankle when she fell a second time, but still she desperately fled, racing away from the well toward the place where they had spread their bedrolls.

For a moment, she remembered Tavish, still sleeping there. The crunching footsteps pursued, slowly but inevitably. She couldn't lead the thing to the bard!

"Tavish!" she shouted, darting to the side, following along the shore of the Moonwell. "Be silent, but flee!"

Alicia spun, seeking Keane against the silhouetting effects of the magical illumination. Surely he could do something!

Her heart churned in deep panic. She couldn't see Keane anywhere in the small, bowl-shaped vale.

"Precantos-nimbus. Tu-arlist!"

There! Suddenly she saw his tall figure, standing like a tree some distance away, shouting strange sounds. Alicia realized, with sharp guilt, that Keane had turned to face the colossal attacker at the same time as she had veered away from the camp, and she hadn't noticed until now that he did not follow her!

The illumination of the light spell still flared, casting its glare across the sloping ground between the iron creature and Keane, uphill slightly from the colossus. The earth there, as everywhere in this little vale, was a mass of jutting boulders and cracked stone.

Keane's magic struck the stones, not with the sudden violence of explosive force but with the slow power of fundamental transformation. The solid nature of the boulders was seized by magic, distorted and adjusted into something much softer, even liquid.

Alicia stared, amazed, as she saw the rocks begin to change shape, oozing flat as if they were soft, doughy mounds, flowing like thick sludge. The rocks melted away, running downhill as thick, brown goop, viscous and soupy. In moments, the area between Keane and the iron beast had become a gooey morass. The tutor's presence taunted the monster, drawing it deeper into the mud.

The sticky stuff flowed around the iron beast's legs, and Alicia saw the gigantic form sink slowly to its waist. It struggled forward, flailing with its powerful arms, splashing gouts of mud with fists that were greater than monstrous hammers. All around them, the rockfield seethed and bubbled, a quagmire. The mud sucked greedily, smacking around the torso and then the shoulders of the animated metal thing.

Finally Alicia saw only its horrible head, capped with the wide, horned helm, and the upward-reaching arms. Then, despite the beast's frantic grasping and thrashing, even these disappeared. Only a thick, bubbling swirl in the sticky surface remained to mark the place where the golem had disappeared.

"Keane!" the princess shouted, stunned and disbelieving. She sobbed and laughed at the same time. "How did you-?"

"Quiet!" he snapped, his tone harsher than she had ever heard. She froze, watching as he pointed at the slowly flowing mass.

"Igneous-layoka!" he barked.

In that same instant, the movement stopped, and Alicia looked with amazement at a flat expanse of stone, sloping gently toward the water, its surface marked by irregular ripples and folds of odd patterns, but no mark indicating where the iron thing had vanished.

Stepping quietly, Alicia moved back toward the magic-user. Her knees wobbled as she felt the reaction to the shock, and she reached out to steady herself against a rock. She saw Keane standing still, listening carefully.

The rock beneath her hand gave her the first clue when it shook, vibrating in her grip. Sound followed shortly thereafter, a dull rumble that bespoke mighty conflict within the earth itself. Then a crash like thunder echoed in the small valley, and the slab of rock that had so recently formed exploded upward and outward in a shower of stinging fragments and acrid, bitter dust.

A hole gaped in the rippled surface, and in its depths, something moved. The shape crushed and battered the rock, widening the aperture and slowly freeing itself from its tomb of solid rock.

Alicia screamed, not hearing the sound but instead feeling the release of mindless terror. The iron monster still lived-it still attacked!

Shaking off rock that had fused around its limbs, the monstrosity bashed with its anvil-sized fists, crushing and widening the hole around it. One arm wrenched to the side as the metal monstrosity climbed upward, and then the twisted limb hung motionless, obviously damaged. But the lone workable hand proved quite capable of bashing away the chunks of enclosing rock.

Another earthshaking rumble wracked the ground as the creature cracked free one leg. Pulling upward, the epicenter of a shower of stone shards, the clanking form lifted itself from the hole, grabbing with its one good hand and lumbering free onto the slab of once-molten stone.

The huge head swiveled back and forth with a dull, creaking sound, as if those steel eyes could see and now searched for prey. Indeed, the view came to rest against Keane, who had stumbled slowly backward as the monster worked itself free of the stone.

The iron mouth gaped, a black hole against the dark plate. A blast of white gas erupted, belching toward Keane. The princess saw the man fall backward on the ground, his body abruptly, unnaturally rigid. The hulking form lumbered closer.

The next sound that ripped through the night jarred Alicia's taut nerves. A shrieking wail rent the air. The noise seemed metallic somehow, as of a great sheet of plate mail ripped across the teeth of many grinding blades.

A surge pulsed in the light spell that still glowed near the shore, and Alicia saw movement there. Tavish! The bard held her harp before her, striking it roughly with her hand. Once again the piercing dissonance jarred their nerves.

Slowly the great head of the iron creature pivoted, coming to rest upon Tavish as Keane still lay immobile before the monster. Alicia held her breath. Would the colossus turn from its helpless victim? Silently she crept forward, trying to reach the magic-user without attracting the attention of the towering mass of iron.

Metal creaked as the monster turned toward the bard, who once again drew the piercing sound from her strings. A great leg stepped toward her, and then another. Keane lay, forgotten for the moment, in the long, menacing shadow.

Alicia darted to his side as the animated metal lumbered away with surprising speed. She saw Tavish turn and run, her harp bouncing against her back, dangling precariously by its leather strap as she scrambled to escape. The harpist used a long staff to help pick her way through the scattered rocks. She started around the shore of the pond, away from Keane and Alicia. Now the huge form of her pursuer cast long shadows across the bard, outlined by the flaring light of Keane's spell.

"Keane!" Alicia hissed, kneeling beside him, trying to control her panic. "Come on-you've got to get up. We've got to run!"

He blinked at her, the first sign that he still lived. His body lay in that rigid position, his back arched so tightly that it didn't rest upon the ground. Alicia watched in horror as his face began to turn blue.

She smelted an acrid odor and remembered the cloud of gas that had spouted from the monster's maw. Had Keane breathed some of the deadly stuff?

His chest! She saw that he did not breathe, and at the same time, Alicia remembered a thing her mother had taught her. Not all druidical arts stemmed from the magic of the goddess, and now she leaned over the dying man, using a worldly, not arcane, skill. Forcing his clenched jaws apart required all the strength of her arms and hands, spurred on by her desperation.

Finally she took a deep breath and leaned over him, pressing her lips to his. Forcefully she exhaled, feeling his chest rise beneath her hand. She pressed downward, forcing the air from his lungs. Then she repeated the procedure, and again.

Abruptly Keane gagged and coughed, expelling the air by the convulsion of his own body. He pulled in great, tearing breaths, though each seemed to cause further coughing and choking. He doubled over in misery, kneeling on the ground and retching.

"Come on!" Alicia cried, tugging at his arm.

"Wait," Keane gasped weakly, peering across the reflective surface of the Moonwell.

They saw Tavish running, scrambling around the perimeter of the pond. She pushed her way through the brambles along the shore, carrying the staff of ash, using it to help maintain her balance in the treacherous terrain. The bard had made it more than halfway around the pond, leading the monster in a wide circle, but fatigue played a role now as Tavish stumbled frequently and leaned on the staff for support.

Keane suddenly whipped around, taking Alicia's arms in a firm grip. "Flee, Lady Princess-you must! We will keep the thing's notice, but you must escape!"

For a moment, his request beckoned before her like a bright, hopeful beacon, but in the next instant, she knew that she couldn't desert her friends. "No-can't you do something? Cast a spell?"

She thought at first he would curse her, so intense was his expression of frustration. He clenched his teeth, almost snarling, and turned back to the pool. Tavish had almost circled the well, and now it seemed that the monster drew steadily closer to the bard with each lumbering step.

Keane ran toward the bard, Alicia at his side. Tavish, they saw as they reached her, staggered from weariness, her face flushed red, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The monster loomed over them, one arm hanging twisted and limp but the other raised menacingly, ready to crush to a pulp any mere flesh found in its path.

"Incendrius carneto!"

Once again Keane's voice barked across the still valley. Alicia held her breath, watching a tiny globule of fire pop from his fingertip and float through the air in a deceptively gentle flight until it reached the hulking form of iron.

Then it erupted into an orange blossom of flame, its hot illumination dwarfing the light spell that still glowed among the rocks. Crackling fingers of fire encircled the colossus, grasping it in a searing embrace. The fireball expanded, engulfing the great metal shape until it vanished within the hellish sphere, flames spewing upward like a hungry, growing blossom of death.

For several seconds, the spell blazed. Alicia and Keane felt its heat on their faces as they helped Tavish limp to a flat rock, where she collapsed. Like the seething heart of a volcano, the fireball flared, a perfect circle towering toward the clouds, obscuring all within its infernal center.

"Look! The monster still comes!" Alicia whispered the words in horror, knowing that Keane could see the black shape emerge from the flame as well as she could. "But how could it stand that heat?"

"Not only withstand it-look, the spell aids the monster! See there? The damaged arm?" Keane pointed, and Alicia understood immediately. The mangled limb of the statue, torn as it burst free of the rock, now flexed whole and unmarred.

"Bulterus!"

Again Keane barked a spell, and Alicia leaped backward as this time a bolt of crackling lightning exploded from his outstretched arm. Like a giant spear, it sizzled through the air, crushing with explosive force into the monster's chest.

"Look! You stopped it!" Alicia shouted, but then she saw that she was mistaken. The statue stumbled backward under the impact of the blow and shook its head slowly, as if trying to dispel a sense of grogginess. It stepped closer to them again, and though its step seemed less sure, not as quick as before, still it lurched inevitably forward.

"Quick! Get to the horses!" the princess urged, trying to help Tavish to her feet. The bard only groaned and slumped back onto the rock.

"I–I can't move," she gasped, her face flushed and perspiring. "Go-both of you! Go without me!"

"Damn!" Keane snapped, but he didn't leave her side. Alicia saw the white staff that Tavish had leaned on. The bard had dropped it when she slumped to the rock. The iron colossus again loomed over them, but Tavish seemed to lack even the strength to stand.

Desperate for any hope, the princess picked up the shaft of wood and darted toward the lumbering statue. It still lurched unsteadily, as if the lightning bolt had stunned it, forced it to move with the sluggishness of a serpent beset by cold.

"Alicia, don't!" cried her teacher in a voice taut with fear.

But his words came too late, nor would they have changed her course had she heard them sooner. The thing still moved slowly, as if every step required the focus of all its energies. Alicia thrust the stave between the monster's legs as it took a step along the shore of the pool.

The metal being abruptly seemed to break free of whatever lingering restraints remained from Keane's spell. A heavy foot of bolted iron kicked out sharply, striking Alicia in the shoulder. Bones snapped and hot streams of agony exploded through the woman's side. Her arm twisted behind her back, a limp and useless member. Alicia cried out in pain, her scream piercing as she felt herself cast through the air like a rag doll to land, with a chill splash, in the brackish waters of the Moonwell.

The staff twisted under the force of the monster's gait, and for a brief moment, the iron beast paused, as if the lone pole had somehow snared its feet. One end of the rod dropped, touching the surface of the water.

It seemed to Alicia as she struck the water that daylight burst around them with explosive speed, so bright was the illumination that surged upward from the waters of the well, outlining the black and rusty form of the statue in purest white. It was a brilliance that seemed to etch every tiny pebble, every branch of cedar, and each blade of withered grass in acute detail. The light surged upward, higher and higher, into a great column beaming into the night sky, clearly reflecting from the overhanging clouds as if dawn had come early to the Fairheight Mountains.

The beast of iron, bound by light, twisted in visible desperation. Alicia heard a sharp crackling sound as of lightning striking nearby, and then the great metal form toppled into the Moonwell, splashing a huge shower of the milky, glowing water from the pool. The colossus twitched and slowly grew still, lying in the shallows with much of its twisted form above the surface of the water.

Then the liquid-or was it the pain? — closed over Alicia, and she saw no more.

Musings of the Harpist

Within the cycles of birth and death, of winter and summer, of victory and defeat, all things know the Balance. The forces of good and evil remain opposed and taut, and it is this tension that provides support for gods and mortals, for all those who can know the difference between light and dark and can freely choose one or the other.

And if the gods know the cycles of life and the end of life, they also know that the Balance is eternal and that the end of life is no more than the prelude to a new beginning.

So it is with a tiny spark of vitality, the birthing of a new presence, the remanifestation of the great goddess, the Earthmother. Her life has lain dormant for a mere blink of an eye by immortal standards, but this was time enough for great changes to wrack her once-vital body and for a terrible rot to set in, a wasting illness that threatens to complete the task of her death for all time.

The spark of vitality may have been kindled by a mighty staff, once the talisman of the Great Druid herself. Or it may have come from the faith of a young princess, who believed that she beheld the divine might of the goddess in the waters of her well. It may even have originated from the great and arcane power represented by the iron golem, a power that had been fused to the well through the accidental falling of the staff.

Perhaps most likely, the rebirth results from all these things, and more… the gradual return of a people to a way of worship that had faded with their mothers, the prayers rendered in the name of the goddess… and even the great wheel of the Balance, coming slowly around to the place where a fresh life could begin.

Whatever the source, the effects are real. I have been witness to a miracle, and I know that my life will not be the same.