Whispering Woods

CHAPTER 17

Thrown through space, pitched through a void, from one spot to another hundreds of leagues off, from nighttime to day, Gull could only grab his head as images crashed upon him.

In a heartbeat, he saw:

A wide bluff arced out over the sea. There were no towns or farms, no ships on the water, only yellow grass stretching to forest half a mile away. Dozens of feet below the bluff, the ocean roared and churned and thrashed against seaweedy rocks, throwing spume that speckled…

A black basalt monolith, a shiny jet-dark cone tall as a church, rearing above the bluff and ocean, at the bottom of which…

Greensleeves was trussed hand and foot on a low black altar carved into the foot of the monolith, where…

Towser, with a silly-looking pink box tied atop his head by a blue scarf, poised a knife like a sickle above Gull's sister. He was ringed by…

Kem and three new bullies armed with short swords. They guarded the wizard, facing out, staring gape-mouthed at Gull, while…

Far behind him, inland, was Towser's circled wagon train, where his clerk and cook and dancing girls and bard and astrologer and nurse carefully tended their handiwork, so they might not see their master's work at the monolith altar, or…

Standing beside Gull…

Lily, her face white as her dancing togs. She chirped like a baby bird. "Gull?"

"Lily!" Visions and ideas swirled around Gull, stunning him. The sea breeze soothed his sweating brow: it was cooler here than on the tropical island. Then one thought soared like a skyrocket. "You're a wizard!"

"What?" She gaped at her shaking hands. "No, it can't be!"

But Gull caught one hand, forced it open. Faint in the seaside glare, her palms still glowed with the white light that summoned Gull.

"It's true! You brought me here! You've got magic inside!"

"Love of the gods!" The girl was thunderstruck. "That explains… my feelings, those voices! Oh, Mishra! I just missed you so badly! And wished you were here! To stop that!"

She pointed to Towser, who stood with sickle knife poised. He didn't look surprised, and suddenly-more thoughts, like waves sweeping him off his feet-Gull knew why.

Towser knew all along that Lily had wizard potential! He'd canvassed the women of the bawdy house, had each don the silver medallion Lily spoke of: a thing that could detect magic within, even if the wearer were unrealized. Towser had bought her contract, ostensibly as a whore, but in fact, to keep her close, for study or…

Sacrifice.

As if struck by lightning, Gull cast off thoughts and confusion, and moved.

Too late.

Kern and the bodyguards rushed. Gull barely hefted his axe before they jumped him. They swung fists, kicked to trip him, body-slammed him to the dirt, mashed him under a half ton of flesh.

Past Kem's scar-laced head, Gull saw the sacrificial knife rise.

And fall.

"Noooo!!!!"

Gull bucked against sweaty bodies, bit, thrashed, jerked his arms and legs, but stayed pinned as if by a landslide. A fist smashed Gull's mouth, bloodied his lips. Yet the bodyguards didn't kill him: they must think Towser wanted him alive.

Through a haze of pain and madness, Kem's face loomed. Scars overlaid veins that throbbed with exertion, and the mangled side that lacked an ear was glossy with sweat.

"Kem, you bastard! You murdering fiend! You whore!" Unable to move, Gull spit filthy oaths into the man's face. "I went into a leech-infested swamp after you! I battled trolls to save your miserable life, you worthless cur! You owe me! That man's out to murder my sister!"

"You went after your sister, not me, you liar!" Kem growled from inches away. "You didn't care about me!"

"I went in after you, damn it! No one deserves to be eaten by cannibals! My sister went after you, too! Because she's got heart!" All this time, Gull pleaded inside that his sister wasn't already dead. "You never showed the gratitude of a cockroach! But you owe us! And now's the time to pay back! Or will you be a dog forever?"

For the first time, Gull saw the scarred brow pucker. Deep pockets lined Kem's eyes, and creases tightened his mouth. He was a haunted man.

Kem suddenly rolled off him. He whapped the other bodyguards. "Let him up!"

Confused, the thugs dropped away. They worked for Towser, but Kem had hired them. Whom to obey?

As they deliberated, Gull shot up like a catapult and brushed them aside. Scrambling on hands and knees, he snatched up his axe.

If his sister was dead, a bloody wreck gutted like a fish, he'd chop Towser into a thousand pieces.

Gaining his feet, he raced across the yellow grass for the monolith. The setting sun just topped the tall cone, casting a halo, and Gull could not see its darkened base clearly.

But he could hear. A savage growling and snarling and snapping welled up. And a man's shriek's.

Squinting, Gull sprinted into the shadow.

A giant badger savaged Towser.

Atop Greensleeves, who was unharmed, stood a small badger with a notched ear.

Half-mad, Gull stumbled.

And thought.

The notch-eared badger had come from the Whispering Woods, leagues away. It hadn't been carried here, couldn't have followed them, wasn't hidden in the wagons.

And only Greensleeves had touched that badger.

So Greensleeves must have conjured it.

So Greensleeves, too, was an unrealized wizard!

Like pebbles falling into slots, a dozen clues clicked and questions were answered. Greensleeves could summon animals she'd touched in the past. That was why the notch-eared badger seemed to follow them. Why the mushroom-beast, the fungusaur, attacked the armored wizard before he stomped Gull. Why it glowed green, brown, and blue, not twinkling from Towser's conjuring nor glowing white from Lily's. Why the giant badger appeared in the troll's lair when Greensleeves was endangered. Why it savaged Towser now.

His sister had nature magic: he'd always known that. Her "second sight." Her ability to tame wild animals, to find strays. How animals never harmed her, not even flies and leeches.

Recently he'd learned there was more: that the magic of the Whispering Woods had flooded her mind, made her a simpleton. Clear of the forest, she learned to think clearly.

But now she could conjure whatever she'd touched.

Greensleeves was a full-blooded wizard!

And Towser had known all along!

As with Lily, Towser sensed Greensleeves's wizardness. So he'd hired Gull as freightmaster, (though Chad could do the job), just to get Greensleeves. (And Gull had thought himself clever in bargaining her passage, while Towser feigned indifference. What a dunce!)

Towser had plotted all along to sacrifice Greensleeves, to steal her mana on this black altar. But his scheme had backfired.

Unrealized or not, his sister had conjured two badgers to protect her.

Yet two badgers wouldn't protect her from an enraged wizard and his bodyguards. Unless…

Big as a bull, wide and flat and gray-backed, face a riot of white and black stripes, the giant badger crouched low to the ground and shredded Towser's fancy striped gown.

The ridiculous box, tied with a scarf, tumbled from atop Towser's head and bounced across the trampled grass. Gull recognized the pink block from the crater, the mana vault. Towser must have planned to store his sister's mystic energy in it.

Except her badger had interrupted the sacrifice.

The skirts of Towser's gown were slashed, and the badger pulled on more cloth clamped in its fearsome jaws. Yet the wizard seemed unharmed, only discombobulated.

And sure enough, Towser spit out a spell and thrust up a hand, and the badger bowled over backward with a snort. Gull had seen that before, in the burned forest. A personal protection spell, an impenetrable aura.

Which Gull longed to test.

"Towser!" he screamed. "Fend off this!"

Gull slung his axe over his shoulder and pegged it like a thunderbolt straight at the wizard's chest.

Wood and steel whirled, end over end. But the heavy sharp head simply bounced off an invisible wall inches from the wizard's nose. Towser never even staggered from the blow. The axe thudded into the shadowed grass around the monolith.

The wizard held up a hand, fingers crooked, and backed away. He shouted over his shoulder, "Kill him! A hundred gold crowns to the one who beheads him!"

Like hounds to the scent, the bodyguards, who'd stood stunned by the strange turn of events, rushed Gull. All except Kem, who was rooted, face twisted by conflicting loyalties.

That left only three tough fighters with swords seeking Gull's head.

If they killed him-and they would-Greensleeves would be next.

The word returned.

Unless…

Whirling, Gull plucked his sister from the altar, sending the smaller badger tumbling. Plunking her down, he snatched up his axe-thank the gods he'd sharpened it-and parted the rope on her wrists.

"G-Gull," she bleated. "What do we d-do?"

Running was out. There was no place to go but over the cliff edge onto rocks.

"Conjure something!" He took a new heft on his axe, ready to swing on the three killers.

"W-what? I don't kn-know-"

"Anything! And hurry!"

Behind him came a small sigh of despair. This wouldn't work, he thought savagely. His sister was unpracticed in magic. Conjuring was an accident, an act of desperation. She couldn't just reach across the void and…

The air before him shimmered. Colors flickered like a rainbow touching the earth. Brown near the ground, green in the middle, blue at head height, yellow above…

Gull was bucked off his feet as the ground erupted.

Brambles, trees, and stone spears shot into the air.

Walls exploded everywhere across the bluff, random, rambling, haphazard.

The tall curly green-brown briars, from the battle of White Ridge, intermixed with the cave swords of the burned forest, as well as curiously stunted trees that twisted back on themselves to make an impassable barrier. The last, Gull knew, were from dismal reaches of the Whispering Woods.

Red earth supported the briars, white muck marked the stone swords, and carpets of dead leaves gave birth to the wall of wood. Smells rolled over Gull. Iron from the red earth, ammonia from bat guano, rot from churned leaves, all mixed with the salt tang of the sea breeze.

Yet the walls made no sense.

A jumble of trees, briars, and stone swords ran from the bluff's edge at his right hand, twenty feet or more thick, then ended suddenly, leaving virgin grass. Another mixed wall curled on the left, no wider than a privet fence, then spun in a spiral like a maze. Way past the wagon circle stood a stand so thick it looked like forest, dense and black with white stripes. Another patch at a stone's throw was square as a kitchen garden.

The thick wall on the right rose fifteen feet, and tendrils of vines hung down and snagged Gull's hair. He backed and snapped stone spears with his clogs.

And swore. Defensively, the right wall was fine, but the leftmost wall wouldn't delay a child. And between was a gap twenty feet across. Towser's bullies could rush the breach easily.

Within seconds. Gull saw the ragged Towser jog past a wall for a better view, then point and shrill orders. Having recovered from the surprise of the green explosion, the three bodyguards raised swords and shot the gap. Yet their feet dragged when they beheld another wizard with her hands in the air.

"More!" Gull shouted. "You've slowed them! Now conjure more!"

"I-I c-can't!" the girl wailed. No higher than his shoulder, tousled hair around her face, tattered shawl drooping off one shoulder, she gripped her brother's elbow. "T-that's all I h-have!"

Gull stifled a groan. He took a fresh grip on his axe. "Try something else! Conjure Morven!"

"W-who?"

She knew no names. "The sailor, damn it, with the gray hair! And the cook's boy, Stiggur! And the centaurs-the horse folk! Hurry!"

Earth tones rippled alongside the woodcutter, and Morven stood there holding his breeches. He cast about wildly. "Ahoy, we're back!"

Gull took one look, roared, "Where's your cutlass?"

"One second I laid it down to hit the bushes! Right beside me-"

"What's the good making plans-"

Behind his bodyguards, Towser set a finger in his grimoire, pointed another, barked in an arcane tongue, then smiled smugly at Gull.

Before the woodcutter's eyes, in the shadow of the monolith, a twinkling filled the air. He reared back.

Whatever Towser conjured, it was big. Like fog issuing from the ground, a body big as a house took form. Slate gray. Above it writhed a half dozen misty gray necks. A fearsome hissing made him flinch.

We'll be eaten, he thought. Like minnows by a bass. Six bass.

Frantically the woodcutter backed, banged into Morven, who cursed as he buttoned his breeches. "Watch where you're-Lance of the Sea! A rock hydra?" The twinkling deepened, solidified, until Gull could bearly see the bramble wall through it.

Better to jump to the rocks, Gull thought. Some of us might survive. None will up here.

Yet Greensleeves hummed, and earth colors rippled not a dozen feet from Towser. With a flurry of brown, green, blue, and yellow, the cook's boy stood coiling his whip, blinking.

"Stiggur!" shouted Gull, and the boy jumped. "Hit him!"

Confused, but heeding his hero's voice, the boy flicked the whip backward along the ground, not straight, and whisked it forward, too hard and fast.

But the tip of the mulewhip cut the air, popped almost in Towser's eye. Startled, the wizard grabbed his bloodied cheek.

The conjuring spoiled, the twinkles before Gull's eyes faded. The fierce hissing gasped out. Like the last smoke of a campfire, the rock hydra dwindled and disappeared. Gull saw dents in the grass where its feet had begun to form.

He heaved a great sigh. That had been too close.

But their luck couldn't last. They needed to organize a defense.

Or die.

Towser had ducked behind a bramble wall. Stiggur stood, whip lying limp on the ground, and regarded the bodyguards, who cast about for orders.

"Stiggur! To me!" Gull bellowed. The boy zipped past the confused thugs before they could stop him. But Stiggur looked up, over the monolith.

A steel spike flashed from the heavens and thudded into the ground at Gull's feet. Another few inches and it would have buried in his skull.

Overhead lofted four balloons, their baskets filled with shrieking goblins. The onshore breeze pushed them rapidly over the bluff. Dangling from rigging, tussling with awkward loads, squabbling with one another, the first crew of leering gray-green goblins dropped spears at the company trapped in the pocket.

Spears clattered off the monolith, ricocheted off the black altar, bounced off the earth. Grabbing Morven and his sister, Gull hauled them into partial shelter against the shadowed monolith. Goblins cackled with glee.

Gull's head throbbed as he tried to track the confusion. They still needed a solid defense. The bodyguards hung back, guarding the gap, but Towser must be conjuring something dreadful. He barked, "Greenie! Fetch the rest! Anything you've touched! The clockwork beast! The centaurs! Our own stinking goblins, even!"

Frowning with concentration, Greensleeves shot her green sleeves to her elbows, raised her hands, murmured. Gull didn't know what she whispered. Prayers? Rhymes? Nonsense?

Close above, the second crew of goblins upended another basket of spears. A steel spike chipped wood off the toe of Gull's clog. Morven stabbed out a hand, deflected a spear. "Quickly, darling!" Two more balloons had yet to assault them.

From behind the twisted wall, a barbarian shout shook the sky.

"Oh, no!" Gull groaned.

Then suddenly they stood in shade deeper than approaching dusk.

Four tree trunks appeared around them. Jointed trees, like a horse's legs. Gull recognized a lower back leg-hand-hewed by himself from a ship's mast.

Stiggur whooped with delight. The clockwork beast stood stationary above them. Gull could have reached up and touched its beamy belly. Above, goblins squawked as their spikes thudded into seasoned wood or clanged off sheet iron flanks. The deadly pointed rain missed the humans.

The cook's boy looped the whip over his shoulder, grabbed a knee joint, and scampered up the clockwork beast's leg and withers like a monkey.

Gull barked for him to stop, but the boy crowed, "They're past!"

Indeed, the stiff wind had pushed the sausagelike balloons out of range, over the wagon circle now. Goblins howled with rage, fistfought in blaming each other. One old bald goblin, in stupid rage, stabbed upward and pierced the balloon, which wheezed like a teakettle as the crew screamed. When the bag split, they hurtled into the densest patch of brambles and stone swords.

Stiggur yelped, laughed like Gull, and yanked a lever. Instantly, the articulated cone eyes of the clockwork beast blinked. A huge iron-shod hoof came off the ground. Towser's bodyguards took a step back, mouths gaping. The boy crowed, "I'll get 'em, Gull! I'll squish 'em!"

But square in the path of the stamping beast, colors gushed like a fountain. Armored and armed, appeared Helki and Holleb.

Stiggur shrilled, yanked, turned the wooden beast and promptly crashed into the bramble wall. The centaurs had already skipped nimbly aside. They saluted Gull with their feathered lances. Spotting the boggled bodyguards, they trumpeted their war cry, leveled their weapons, and charged.

The woodcutter felt a stab of satisfaction that choked him. It'd been his nagging that made them gird for war again…

But they still needed to organize a defense! They had plenty of help, but had to get out of this pocket! If those blue barbarians trapped them here, they'd be slaughtered.

Morven plucked a steel spike from the ground. "I can stave someone's hull with this! Who's for hitting?"

Gull cast about. Clashing and thrashing, Stiggur fought with his levers to free the clockwork beast from the bramble wall. Unable to back out, the boy elected to drive forward. Huge wood-and-iron limbs shredded brambles and snapped stone spears. As the construct and its rider disappeared through the rambling wall, Gull couldn't help. Stiggur had opened yet another gap.

"You'll have a snootful in a moment!" Gull shouted over the noise. "That shout was-Greenie! Hold up!"

But lost in her own world of newfangled magic, his sister went on whispering and waggling her fingers.

A roar answered her.

A pair of humpbacked grizzly bears big as hayricks winked into being thirty feet away. One of the shaggy brown animals roared, snapped slavering jaws full of long white teeth, looked around for something to bite.

And spotted Gull and company against the monolith.

The woodcutter gulped. He never knew his sister had touched grizzly bears!

But why did they turn this way…?

Then he realized.

Greensleeves couldn't control any of these creatures.

They'd attack whatever they liked. Including him and his sister.

In a flash, Gull saw the problem.

Towser, with years of training and experience, had learned to control whatever he summoned. Laid on each being, magical or not, was a geas, a compulsion to serve the wizard. Thus Towser could summon the darkest monster and point it at an enemy, himself immune from attack.

But Greensleeves had neither training nor years. Whatever she conjured did as it pleased. The badgers, befriended, had chosen to defend her.

But these grizzlies…

Suddenly they had too much "help."

The bigger bear, the male, kicked its back legs to gather speed, rolled at them like a boulder from a mountaintop.

"Greensleeves!" shouted Gull. "Something to stop it!"

His sister saw the charging bear, threw up her hands, bleated.

An upwelling flare of multicolored light, a rapid barking and woofing, and suddenly nine husky gray timber wolves, thoroughly fuddled, spilled across the altar.

They thumped at Greensleeves's feet, tumbled against the monolith and bounded away, dumped on their rumps in the path of the grizzly bear.

Instinctively protecting his pack, one huge wolf leaped at the grizzly's face. With gleaming fangs it latched onto the bear's muzzle. The bruin half reared to bat it away. The wolf kicked scrabbled for footing in the grass, yanked to tear flesh and pull its opponent off-balance. Other wolves nipped at the bear's flanks, but the rampaging female smashed amidst them, bowling them right and left.

"Rabid wolves to stop hungry bears?" rasped Morven. "That's an improvement?"

Gull only shook his head. "Badgers, I'd seen her play with! Deer! Wolverines, even! But I never imagined she'd touched-"

He turned at a snarl. Atop the monolith perched a tawny mountain lion. It clung with razor claws. White whiskers bristling, ears laid back, it screeched a challenge to this indignity.

A louder roar distracted the fighters. Yelping, howling, leaping, screaming, a horde of blue-painted, white-haired, tusked barbarians gathered at the gap in the crazy bramble walls.

And charged.