Echoes of the Fourth Magic (20 page)

Del jumped to his feet, the emotional bonds that held him torn apart by his shock. His mind reeled, blurred by an image of a woman he would keep until the end of his days.

When his thoughts cleared, when he had searched the area and become convinced that the woman was indeed long gone, Del realized that he didn’t know where he was. He had a notion of the general direction of the camp, so he started back, keeping an eye out for landmarks that would jog his memory and lead him true. But whenever he felt that he was making progress, expecting the firelight to come into view with every step, the vision of the woman ebbed back in, muddling his thoughts. Soon he merely wandered aimlessly in the darkness.

Minutes became hours as Del meandered. Luckily, his random path led him in circles, not far away in one direction, and in the deep blue of predawn Belexus and Andovar were upon him.

“DelGiudice!” Andovar cried. “Did ye no’ hear our calls?”

Del looked around reflexively at the sound, but his barely opened eyes did not register the forms of the two men who stood near. He resumed his confused journey, but Belexus sprang in front of him and blocked his path, holding him by the shoulders at arm’s length. Nearly asleep on his feet, and indifferent to what was going on, Del offered no resistance.

“What might be wrong with the man?” Andovar asked.

“I fear an enchantment is upon him,” Belexus replied. He grabbed Del’s chin and tilted his head back so that he could look into his eyes. He waved his hand in front of Del’s face, but the entranced man did not respond. “His eyes are looking somewhere other.

“DelGiudice,” Belexus called softly, and shook Del slightly.

“It’s all right,” Del slurred, “she won’t hurt me.” The startled rangers looked at each other wide-eyed.

“The Lady!” Andovar whispered, barely finding his breath. “Might it be?”

Belexus shrugged uncomfortably and turned back to Del. “DelGiudice!” he shouted as he studied the glazed eyes with new concern, and he shook Del fiercely. The first finger of dawn traced through the trees then, and Del’s eyes popped open, freed of their trance by the light of the morning.

“Belexus,” he said in surprise when he saw the concerned face inches from his own. “Time to go already?”

Andovar rushed to say something, but Belexus stayed him with a wave of his hand.

“Had ye a good sleep?” the ranger asked.

“Wonderful!” Del replied. “Who wouldn’t sleep well in this place?” But then his face crinkled in confusion, some flitting images running on the edge of his consciousness. “I had a strange dream … I think.” More fleeting visions of the dancer flashed about in the recesses of his mind, just out of the straining grasp of his consciousness.

Try as he might, he couldn’t catch them.

“I can’t remember,” he said with a frustrated shrug of his shoulders.

Again the two rangers glanced at each other.

“Where are the others?” Del asked, even more confused as he looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. “And the horses?”

Belexus pointed in the direction of the camp.

Del decided to look for answers some other time; these minor irregularities hardly seemed important, for right now a more pressing need was upon him. “Then let’s go,” he said, walking away, “I’m starving!”

“By the Colonnae, Belexus, he hus seen her,” Andovar said in a low voice.

“Then suren a blessing light shines on that one,” Belexus replied. “He is indeed a fortunate man.”

* * *

The others were awake when the three returned to the camp, Billy and Reinheiser setting up for breakfast while Mitchell sulked against a tree in the distance. Again Del wondered why he hadn’t woken up in the camp. But he didn’t worry much about it, not while his empty stomach called.

They ate a hearty breakfast and were soon back on the trails. Images of the night before skipped in and out of Del’s thoughts, teasingly close but unattainable.

They rode easily across the smooth ground, allowing Mitchell, whose horse still refused to let him ride, to keep up with them. All in all, it seemed a pleasant and quiet morning and they enjoyed the sounds and colors of the wood and the mild breeze of another perfect spring day. Scents of newly bloomed flowers mingled their sweet perfume in a rich collage of natural fragrance in the clean air.

The path wound on and soon the party came to a wide grassy field bordered by thick pines. Instantly Del’s visions returned and the events of the night before began to fall into place. He quick-stepped his mount up between the two rangers.

“This field,” he stammered. “It was in my dream! I came here.” He pointed to the small bluff on the side of the field where he had lain the night before. “Over there. And this beautiful worn—” He paused helplessly, mouth hanging open, eyes wide, as it came clear to him now, all of it. “It wasn’t a dream,” he declared, and he looked at the rangers, searching for some explanation.

“The Lady,” Andovar said with a gleam in his eyes. “Tell me o’ the Lady.”

“Beautiful,” Del answered. “Golden hair and green eyes.” He closed his eyes to focus on the image. “And she had something here.” He put his hand to his forehead. “It shone green in the moonlight.”

“An emerald,” Belexus explained. “Her gem mark, for she is the Emerald Witch.”

“Then it’s true?” Del gasped. “There really is such a person?”

“ ’Tis spoken she can be to every man what most he desires in a woman,” Andovar said. “Ye are o’ the very few to huv seen her.”

“Have you?”

“Not I.”

“Nor I,” Belexus added, “but me father knows her as well as any.”

“Yestereve, I named ye lucky and suren ye are,” Andovar said. “ ’Tis in me heart’n’hopes that I might gaze upon the beauty of the Witch o’ the Wood before me time for leaving this world.”

Del floated in a happy trance the rest of the morning, seeing the wood as many times more beautiful now that the memory of the witch rang clear in his mind. More than once he imagined he saw her slipping behind a tree or dancing in distant shadows. This was her realm, a reflection of her beauty, and her magical presence pervaded its very essence.

But as the morning waned, he sadly realized that they were nearing the end of Avalon. Rocky spurs of the towering Crystals rose up out of the trees just to the south and the east.

Then the mountains were lost from view as the party came upon a thickly packed grove of oaks with a canopy that let in little light. The dimness wasn’t a problem, though, for here the straight road rolled wide and distinct, sloping upward and cutting through impassable walls of oak and elm that formed a green and brown tunnel around it.

A speck of light showed the far end of that tunnel, ever growing as they approached. Even sooner than Del had expected, they came to the abrupt end of Avalon. Beyond the trees lay a grassy field and, in the distance, a mountain wall of gray stone.

Just a few yards from the exit, still under the protective shadow of the trees, Belexus wheeled his horse around.
“No farther do we rangers go,” he said. “Yer horses, too, huv reached the end o’ their road.”

“But Bellerian said you would take us to Illuma,” Billy said.

“And so we huv,” Belexus replied, “for beyond the wood, at the northern end o’ the field called Mountaingate, lies the entrance to the Silver Realm. There, by the words of Prince Calae, ye shall find yer destiny.”

Del didn’t want to leave. Since the Halls of the Colonnae, he had followed the road gladly, letting it take him where it would, and looking for adventure around every bend. But now, whatever might lay ahead, the road was taking him from the place he most wanted to be.

Noting that distress, Billy dismounted quickly and moved to support his friend. Truly he felt for Del, realizing that he, too, would have surrendered to the enchantment of the wholesome wood under a different set of circumstances.

He led Del out slowly, letting him savor every last second. As they passed the rangers, Del stopped and looked to Belexus.

“How can I leave?” he asked, honestly torn between his desires and his responsibility.

Belexus understood the torment in Del’s eyes.

“Ye huv me pity, me friend,” he replied. “Many are the sorrows on the road o’ life, yet oft the grief o’ parting is the most unlooked for and the most to hurt. Yet ye must be going. By the words o’ Calae himself, Lochsilinilume is the land o’ yer purpose and yer destiny.”

No reason for leaving seemed good enough to Del at that moment, but he continued on sadly, vowing in his heart that he would one day soon return to Avalon and seek out the mysterious witch.

Mitchell and Reinheiser walked up next, their stride considerably different from the lingering steps of Del and Billy, showing these two to be anxious indeed, and it wasn’t hard to figure out their motivations: Reinheiser to see what
would come next, and Mitchell to get away from the rangers so that he would once again be the one in control.

Andovar stepped his horse out, blocking their path. “Ye keep me warning, Mitchell,” he promised grimly. “Should ye bring any hurt to DelGiudice, the sword of Andovar will part yer head from yer neck!”

“And all of the rangers will hunt ye down,” Belexus added. “And to yer terror, so I’m guessing, greater powers more horrible in their wrath than anything ye huv ever dreamed will be wanting a piece of yer stubborn hide!”

Mitchell just sidestepped Andovar’s horse and kept on walking, pretending to ignore the rangers altogether. He heard their words, though, and he marked them well.

“Martin,” he said to the physicist when they were clear of the rangers and not yet up to Del and Billy, “someday, with you at my side, I’m going to own this world. Then I’ll pay back those rangers and especially that damned DelGiudice.”

“If you plan to dominate this world, Captain, you are going about it all wrong,” Reinheiser replied. “You reveal your enmity to some very powerful foes, when gaining their confidence would better suit your purposes.”

Mitchell considered Reinheiser’s words and, except for a thoughtful grunt, remained silent.

The four men emerged from Avalon into a bright noon sun. They were on the edge of a flat, green field stretching about a quarter mile south to a grouping of mountains, and twice that distance north, where the main range of the great Crystals lay dormant like resting giants, comfortable in their confidence that they were truly unconquerable. The field was barely two hundred yards wide, bordered on the west by the cliff ledge overlooking Blackemara, running from the feet of the northern mountains to the expanse of Avalon. A towering stone spur lined the eastern side of the field, ending abruptly just south of where the men stood, allowing the field to spill out around the southern mountains into a wider rolling plain in the southeast.

The men walked slowly northward, approaching a rising wall of trees and stone. In the middle of this imposing barrier stood two trees, similar to elms, but with silver-hued bark and leaves colored white as a puffy cloud. They bent to meet each other, their intertwining branches making them seem almost as one, forming an arched entrance to the lone trail up the mountain.

“I
’M IN FOR
it now,” Del whispered to Billy when he saw that Mitchell and Reinheiser had nearly caught up to them.

But the captain was still considering Reinheiser’s advice, and he knew that Belexus and Andovar were probably watching from the shadows of Avalon. He wasn’t about to invoke the rage of the powerful rangers; not yet.

“I’m in charge again,” Mitchell declared as he walked past Del and Billy. “And from now on, if we meet someone, I’ll do the talking.” Too relieved to worry about the implications of Mitchell’s command, Del let the point pass without an argument.

As they approached the silvery archway, it became obvious to all the men that there was something special about these trees, as if some magical aura emanated from them, a fairy-tale flavor of the happy dreams of a child’s bedtime. Visibly the tension eased out of the men’s strides and taut muscles unwound with every step toward the wondrous boughs, and as they came under the shadows of the white leaves, a nonsensical, yet innocently joyous singing filled their ears. It seemed so appropriate that they hardly noticed it, and a long moment passed before they realized they were not alone. They peered up the sloping path with renewed caution, but the contrasting patches of shadow and sunlight blurred everything beyond a few yards.

“Do you think they know we’re here?” Billy asked.

The singing stopped.

“They know,” Reinheiser answered.

Mitchell slipped aside, hoping to blend into the surroundings to gain a better vantage point. He had barely started moving, though, when an arrow cracked into a tree inches from his head.

“On your lives, halt and be recognized!” came a command—a young woman’s voice, or perhaps even that of a boy child, and certainly not ominous. But the arrow was several inches deep into the tree. The men froze.

“Cast your weapons to the ground before you,” the voice ordered. Billy and Del looked at each other, each perfectly willing to surrender their swords, not really knowing how to use them anyway, but expecting a violent confrontation. Mitchell, after all, certainly wouldn’t give up easily to a voice so removed from violence.