The Southern Trail (Book 4) (24 page)

Marco recollected the frustration that had boiled over, just before his nightmarish adventures had begun, when he had flattened the forest.

“It was,” he admitted.  “I shouldn’t have done that, but everything was going wrong.”

“If you’re going to be a hero, you’ve got to keep that temper in check.  And you’ve got to know when to sacrifice some things, even something precious, to save a greater good,” Theophilus counseled him with a voice that was seemingly graver, and more compelling to listen to.

Marco sat and listened; the words seeming so sensible.  “I’m not really the hero though,” he protested.  “Lady Iasco is the one who knows what to do; I just follow directions.”

“I doubt that greatly.  Iasco wouldn’t put so much faith in someone whose judgment she didn’t think was the best in the world.  She is a hero, but so are you.  Just remember that you will have to make a choice that will seem so painful you’ll want to cease to live, but Iasco – and your heart – will know the right thing to do,” Theophilus said.  “Now lie down and rest, and remember this one trick,” he touched Marco’s temple as he compelled Marco to lie back, suddenly feeling sleepy.  “Here is your other hand, young hero.  I’m glad we had this chance to meet.”

Marco’s eye lids grew heavy.  “How do you know Lady Iasco?” he asked, or thought he asked, just before he fell asleep.

Chapter 19

When Marco awoke, a light drizzle was falling on him.  He opened his eyes and looked up at the sky overhead; there were ragged high clouds thinly scattered overhead, the last remnants of a rain storm that had moved over and past him.

He felt, or imagined he felt, a residual pain in the stump on his left arm.  He raised the limb to observe the mangled flesh there, and then held it aloft over his head, not moving, as he studied the inexplicable sight he saw.

His left hand was in place, attached to his wrist, and as golden as his right hand was.

“How can it be?  Theophilus?” Marco called.

He wasn’t in the cave, he belatedly realized, as he lay on his back.  He could see the sky, and there were no walls evident.  He sat up, his left hand remaining poised in front of his face, and he stared around in astonishment and confusion, and even fear. 
Am I losing my mind
, he asked himself.

He sat on the ground in the center of a clearing in the forest, one in which all the trees were flattened, lying on the ground, their trunks pointing outward in a circle that radiated from the point where he sat.

It was all impossible. He had not left the spot in the forest?  Yet his left hand was golden, and he had the memories, clear and real, of the impossible adventures he had suffered through.

Perhaps he was going mad, he concluded.  Yet even if he was mad, he had to do something besides sit and do nothing.  Ellersbine was still out somewhere ahead of him, still in need of rescue, he had to believe, if he could believe anything in the world where so many things seemed to be both real and not real.  He focused on the golden left hand again, which told him that Theophilus had been real.  He pointed the hand in the air over head, held his breath, and willed it to shoot a bolt of energy into the sky.

He looked at the hand, ready to close his eyes in response to the flash of light he expected to see.  Nothing happened.  He saw nothing.  The hand was golden but not ensorcelled.

Then there was a quiver in his hand; it vibrated, shaking, and he could see it shiver, almost, it seemed to remind him, like a dog that quivered with anticipation of receiving a delightful treat held in the hand of its owner, a promise of an imminent delight.

Suddenly, he saw a flash of light and a small bolt of lightning came falling down out of the emptying overhead sky.  The bolt of power streaked downward, its appearance foreshortened by the direct angle it traveled at as it approached Marco.  It was within his field of vision for only a second, and then it grew large in the split second before it struck him, sliding smoothly into the fingers of his upraised left hand.  There was a tingle along the length of his arm, and then the extraordinary moment was over.

Or perhaps it was not over, as he felt a fluttery energy that occupied him.  He was aware of it – not uncomfortable, but aware.

Marco lowered his left hand, then raised his right one, and willed himself to fire a bolt of power into the sky.  Immediately, seemingly faster than ever before, he had to close his eyes as a shot of energy leapt from his fingers and disappeared into the sky.

Astonishing, he told himself softly.  He no longer felt the captured energy within himself.  He had taken it in, then dispelled it.

Bravo, Marco
, he swore he heard a woman’s voice softly say.  It had been Iasco’s voice.  A lump formed in his throat, and a powerful longing to see the extraordinary priestess of Ophiuchus swept over him.

“Are you here, my lady?” he asked aloud.

There was silence.

Marco waited, and heard no response, leaving him to question once again whether he was sane or not.

After long moments of silence, he waited no more.  He stood up, and picked up the damp knap sack beside him, leaving the bag of foodstuffs to the busy insects that claimed possession of it.

He thought about the ramifications of what he had just done.  Somehow, with his left hand, he had drawn in power.  He had held the power in his body, then released it.

He straddled a tree trunk, and climbed over, not even aware of his actions as he mulled what had happened.

It seemed impossible.  As he straddled the next large tree trunk that crossed his path, he decided to try to repeat the unexpected capture of energy.  He raised his hand again, and willed it to capture more energy.  The hand seemed to almost try to convey a feeling to Marco, as though it were happy to be called on properly, and correctly told to do what it was capable of doing.

A bolt of energy immediately flew from the sky and entered Marco’s body.

He sat astride a tree trunk, and felt the energy within him.  It was present, and he was aware of it.  It was not painful, only distracting.  He moved off the tree, and took several steps, then raised his right hand and set the energy free.

Marco climbed and walked and thought, then stopped to consider a thought.  Where had the energy come from, he wondered.  There was no telling.  It might have come from the heavens, or it might have been pulled from some other sorcerer at some unknown distance.

He shook his head, and looked up at the sky.  The last clouds were in the east; time was moving on.

If there was a Princess Ellersbine – if she was not simply an imaginary obsession of his unstable mind – then he was not making any progress towards finding and rescuing her.

He hopped over the next smaller tree, then began to move forward rapidly, until he found the trail.  He felt a small sense of victory, glad to see something that he expected, something pedestrian in more ways than one.

With that, he started traveling forward at an easy jog, on his way to set Ellersbine free.  The trail curved gently around the contours of the mountain that it covered, and Marco grew anxious as he followed the curve, worried that at any moment he would catch sight of the tunnel he had entered the previous time when he had thought that he had been on the trail.  The path went on and on, seemingly past the point that he dreaded, and then it entered a valley, and began to dip down as it curved around on the inside of the valley, and he knew that he was past the turn, the perhaps illusory tunnel, and still on the trail of the princess, he hoped.

He continued on, growing more confident that he was on the proper trail, then suddenly remembering that he had no actual proof that Ellersbine was in fact on the trail.  But he continued on, as the trail turned and started to rise again along the side of the mountain.

Marco jogged until he had a stitch in his side, and he slowed down.  He wanted a sip of water; he raised his left hand to his mouth to take a sip of water, saw the new golden hue, and wondered if the enchantment from Diotima would still be on place.

One sip on his finger produced a delicious wet taste of the spring water and brought a smile to his face as he continued to progress.

The water was refreshing, and Marco suddenly felt that he could jog once more.  He resumed his quicker pace, and continued on until late afternoon.  There was a light object on the trail, he noticed as he slipped down a muddy, sloping portion of the trail.  When he reached the object he saw that it was a woman’s shoe, a dirty and tattered, formerly elegant piece of footwear, and in the weeds beside the trail, he saw the mate to the shoe.

They were a pair of shoes such as only a woman of high nobility would wear.  In the wilderness that surrounded him there could be only one woman who would have such shoes.  He felt energized by the confirmation that he truly was on the trail of the Princess Ellersbine, and his pace increased to a full run, so that he covered several more miles before nightfall finally dropped complete darkness upon him.

His stomach growled from the emptiness of unknown hours since his last meal, but he found that the water of Diotima’s spring kept him vitalized.  After several moments of standing still in the dark, Marco lit up his right hand, and began walking, using the narrow circle of light he produced to illuminate the path in front of him for several hours more of advancement, until he finally climbed up onto a stony shelf beside the path, and fell asleep leaning back against the side of a mountain.

Sunlight flickering as it passed through the foliage overhead awoke him the next morning.  The sun was not far above the horizon.  He sipped on his finger and climbed down from the side of the trail, then started walking.  He traveled more slowly than he had the previous day, as he walked with his eyes down on the ground, looking for edible plants.  He found a few stalks and leaves that he chewed as he walked, and then found a raspberry bush when he passed a sunny opening, a source of a feast that he stuffed his mouth full of before he started walking again.

In late afternoon Marco came around a sharp turn in the path, and found an astonishing sight before him – a wide savannah located several hundred feet lower than his position on the mountainside trail.  The location of the path was evident in a nearly straight bright line across the flat country below.  And far out on the savannah he saw a dark line that slowly moved away from him – the gang that he was so relentlessly pursuing.

Chapter 20

Marco was exultant at the sight of the men he was chasing.  He felt pity for the princess who had been made to travel so far, a long, hard march that would have been far more grueling than anything she had ever done in her life before, he was sure.

A sense of renewed purpose set him to running as quickly as possible, following the course of the path as it began the long descent across the mountain front.  The way involved a series of switchbacks at a moderate angle of descent, and once Marco had doubled back on his first in the series of reversing slopes, he began to look for opportunities to recklessly dash straight down from one level to the next, saving a considerable amount of time until he stumbled over a protruding tree root and rolled to a hard landing that gave him a painful gash in his scalp.

Marco returned to the switchbacks after that, and nursed himself with Diotima’s spring water, which quickly staunched the bleeding, and softened some of the matting in his dirty head of hair.  He ran on then, and as the sunlight started to fade he reached the end of the switchbacks, the end of the trail in the mountains, and the end of that phase of his trek to save Ellersbine.

Fyld and Rhen and Hearst and the others, the wounded and the healthy survivors of the battle at Rurita, were far behind him.  He hadn’t thought of them once during the long chase he had carried out.  He hoped that they were safely back on their own trail, and he hoped that he would be able to meet them again someday, in happy circumstances, all of them and the princess and he – even if that someplace turned out to be Foulata.

He was hours behind Ellersbine, but only hours, no longer days behind, and he resolved to catch his quarry before the sun rose.

He lit his right hand dimly, then held it low so that it would be less conspicuous in the savannah night, and he began to jog once more.  When the moon rose an hour later he slowed to have a long drink of water from his finger, and he idly wondered as he walked if he would ever be satisfied to drink regular water from a well again.

When the moon was directly overhead he slowed to a walk, but kept on moving, exhausted, but determined.  Half an hour later he stopped, and extinguished the light from his hand.  He looked ahead across the plain, and saw a distant fire burning, a fire that he suspected was the camp of the travelers who held the woman he was determined to save.

He walked in the darkness, relying on the dim light of the crescent moons and the stars.  He heard the noises of the camp when he drew closer, voices of men raucously singing, and then he heard a scream that chilled his heart – a woman’s scream of despair and anguish.  He sprinted forward towards the fire, listening to the alternating screams and laughter, and saw figures take shape among the shadows as he approached.

When he got to the outer perimeter of the camp, a guard suddenly stood up, a man he had not noticed as he had focused on the camp fire.

“Who are you?” the man asked loudly.

There was another scream and another round of laughter.

Marco swept his sword out of its scabbard, the first time he had touched the weapon since his ballroom battle with Death, the battle that might or might not have happened.  He swung the sword too swiftly for the guard in front of him to even see, and sliced it across the man’s neck, making him fall silently to the ground.

He kept his sword out, then stepped closer to the camp, and peered into the ruddily lit scene, where he saw a sight that both made him want to cry and made him want to kill every man in the camp.