The Fifth Sorceress Read online

  A tear began to trace a shiny path down one cheek. Tristan, where are you?

  As if reading her mind, Wigg gently extended one of his hands to her face, wiping away the tear, his previously harsh demeanor temporarily faded.

  ‘Don’t worry, little one,’ he said comfortingly. ‘We shall find him. He doesn’t know I can sense his location, and it is only a matter of time, especially if he is not on the move. Most probably he has simply forgotten tonight’s festivities.’

  A small clearing had appeared in the midst of the ever-thickening forest. It looked like a good place to stop. He hated the idea of taking time to rest, but feared the princess may need it. Neither did he mention to her that Tristan could probably survive alone in these woods indefinitely if he chose to, perhaps avoiding even the old wizard himself. No one knew these woods like Tristan.

  Wigg lowered his eyes slightly before speaking his next carefully measured words. ‘If he refuses to return of his own free will to fulfill his duties, the situation will become difficult, and even though I love him as I would my own child, I may have to take action to ensure his return. I have a great responsibility to your father.’

  Just as Shailiha began to wonder what type of action Wigg was referring to, her bay mare abruptly stopped walking, then began to paw the ground nervously, snorting and shaking her head back and forth, rattling her bridle. Wigg’s black gelding reared up and whinnied loudly. Despite any prodding from their riders, the two horses refused to advance into the clearing.

  With a quick gesture from Wigg, Shailiha stopped trying to spur her horse onward. He put an index finger vertically across his lips to indicate silence, and she nodded. Wigg quickly dismounted, holding his reins firmly in one hand as he walked forward and turned to face the gelding. Closing his eyes, he placed his right hand flat upon the horse’s forehead for a moment. Immediately, the gelding began to calm down, while Shailiha’s mare still continued to dance about. Fearing for her unborn child, she started to dismount. But, as if seeing her through his closed eyes, Wigg immediately stretched his other arm forward, gesturing to her to stay in her saddle.

  She watched Wigg as he abruptly turned away to look into the clearing. Then, completely amazed, she watched the color immediately drain from his face. Automatically, the princess lifted her eyes to follow his gaze …and began to shake uncontrollably, bile rising in her throat and making her feel as if she might vomit.

  It was something out of a nightmare, and its eyes were focused directly on Wigg.

  It was too large and misshapen to be a man. Yet it stood on two legs and had arms like a man. The huge, elongated head held insane, bloodshot eyes, but there was no nose, only slits in the skin where a man’s nostrils would be. On each side of the bald head were flat, elongated ears, the earlobes ending in long, ragged points of skin. Hanging from each corner of the mouthful of dark and decaying teeth was a perfect white incisor fang as long as her index finger. Lathered drool ran from the mouth to the chin, and down to its hairy chest in long white strings. Its only clothing was a leather-fringed warrior’s skirt, which did little to hide the grotesque, misshapen male genitals beneath it. Its own dried excrement clung darkly to its legs, and each of the highly elongated fingers and toes ended in long, tearing talons. Around its neck hung an odd chain of small round orbs. Gasping, Shailiha realized they were a collection of desiccated eyeballs. It held in its hands a terrible battle ax such as she had never seen. The long, black helve was randomly patterned with dried blood, and its top was crowned with a cracked human skull. From each of the skull’s temples a shiny silver ax blade extended outward at right angles. The sun streaming through the treeless clearing glinted menacingly off their highly polished edges.

  She looked again at the nightmare’s eyes. They weren’t just insane. They held something else – something she could only describe as an insatiable, uncontrollable need.

  From the center of the clearing it stared unflinchingly at Wigg for what seemed an eternity, its chest heaving. Another string of white drool snaked wetly from its chin to the ground.

  Then, without warning, the thing raised the battle ax high above its head and charged headlong at the old wizard. Its speed was amazing. Crossing the clearing in an instant, it let forth a deranged battle scream. Terrified, Shailiha watched as Wigg stood frozen before his horse, almost as if he were willingly embracing his own death. Finally, at the last possible instant, the wizard seemed to regain his senses and rolled nimbly to the right across the field, the silver, wheeling blur of the battle ax barely missing his head. The ax blades continued their deadly swath downward, cleaving point-blank into the black gelding, slicing horsehide, bone, and muscle. The horse screamed. Blood erupted everywhere as the head and neck finally tore away from the shoulders. Its legs helplessly kicking, the gelding lost his brief struggle with death in midair and crashed sideways upon the ground.

  For a moment the thing stood looking at the carnage of the horse, the blood running from the helve down its forearms and finally dripping from its elbows into a puddle upon the ground. A sickening grin began to walk the length of its grotesque mouth as yet more drool, pink with splattered blood, fell to its chest.

  It turned once more toward Wigg and raised the ax over its head for another charge.

  But this time, as the battle ax reached the zenith of its swing, the wizard raised his arms and the ax was pulled out of the creature’s hands and flew sideways across the clearing like a pinwheel, landing squarely at Wigg’s feet. Shailiha watched, panic-stricken, as the old one calmly made no attempt to pick it up when the thing charged at him again, this time extending its bare hands and sharp talons.

  The princess shook with the realization that the wizard was about to die before her eyes.

  Instead, though, Wigg pointed to the ax and it rose hauntingly into the air. He quickly extended his fingers, and the ax flew across the clearing, end over end, in a black-and-silver blur.

  With a sickening crack, one of the ax’s blades buried itself into the thing’s forehead. The creature fell over onto its back, dead. Yellowish brain matter began to ooze from the shattered skull.

  Then immediately came the thunder and lightning. She thought at first she must be hallucinating, to see lightning on such a calm day. It streaked its way across the expanse of the otherwise clear sky in convoluted patterns she had never imagined possible, followed by thunder that pounded through the air, shaking everything in the forest. Then she heard a strange noise, and once again looked out at the thing that lay in the middle of the clearing – the thing that Wigg had killed.

  From around its great, shattered skull came a hissing sound as the yellow fluid from its head bled out into the grass. An inexplicable shroud of fog began to rise up from the turf around the head, bringing up into the air a stench so malodorous that she was forced to lower her face, covering her nose and mouth.

  Shailiha found herself dumbly looking down to find wet, sticky blood and pink pieces of horseflesh all over her clothes. Blankly rubbing her protruding abdomen, she lifted her hand to see her palm and fingers covered with the horrible mixture. She began to vomit.

  The last thing she remembered was Wigg’s hands reaching up to catch her as she fell from her saddle.

  The sounds of his weeping awakened her. It came from somewhere off in the distance, yet it was very distinct. How odd. Opening her eyes, she saw fluffy clouds upon the bright blue canvas of an afternoon sky, floating behind the orange and green leaves of a hypernia tree. How beautiful. But she was going to be sick again. She rolled onto her side and just let it happen. As her mind began to clear, she realized she was lying on the soft grass under a tree on one side of the clearing.

  Suddenly she remembered. The clearing. The …thing. She sat bolt upright and looked around. The creature that had tried to kill Wigg still lay dead where it had fallen, the handle of the battle ax rising into the air from the thing’s smashed, grotesque forehead. The odd shroud of fog that had inexplicably gathered around it was still there. To her left, the remains of Wigg’s beheaded horse lay at pitifully impossible angles in a huge pool of its own dark red blood. She looked down over her riding habit and gently rubbed her abdomen, praying to the Afterlife that her unborn child had not been injured. Somehow her clothes and hands had been wiped clean, or as close to clean as someone could have done under the circumstances.

  She heard the sound of sobbing. Slowly rising to her feet, she was amazed to see Wigg sitting back upon his heels in the grass next to the dead creature, crying over it almost uncontrollably. With his hands covering his face and his head bent over, tears dripped from between his fingers and onto his robes, creating dark gray blotches. His shoulders were shaking.

  Shailiha walked up to the old one, trying not to look at the mangled corpse that lay between them both. Without speaking, she laid one hand upon his shoulder and bent down to look at him. Uncovering his face, the wizard finally took her hands in his, stood, and led her out of the clearing.

  He took her to where he had placed the saddle and tack after removing it from the murdered horse. The saddle blanket was spread upon the ground, and Shailiha rather awkwardly sat down upon it, relieved to be off her feet, for she thought she might soon fall down, anyway. It occurred to her that she had never in her life seen a wizard cry, nor had she ever heard of one doing so.

  Wigg slowly sat down next to her. Reaching out, he gently spread open the upper and lower lids of her right eye, and examined it. Satisfied, he reached into the sleeve of his robe and produced a clean, recently picked plant root.

  ‘Suck on this from time to time, little one,’ he said compassionately.

  As she obediently took the root from him and placed it in her mouth, a pleasantly sweet flavor emerged.

  At her questioning look he said, ‘It will help with the vomiting.’

  His tears apparently suspended for the moment, he placed the palm of his left hand on her abdomen and closed his eyes. After several seconds, he opened them again. ‘Your child is well,’ he said. He rubbed his hands together as he looked back out to the clearing. ‘We have been fortunate.’

  She reached out to wipe a tear from his cheek. He had saved her life, but she understood none of what had happened.

  ‘Wigg, what was that thing?’ she asked urgently. ‘Why did it try to kill you?’ She lowered her eyes. ‘And why do you cry so?’ She looked out into the clearing. ‘It’s dead. You should be happy.’

  Without speaking, Wigg rose to his feet and walked the short distance to where he had tied the princess’s mare to a tree. Reaching into the food basket tied to the saddle, he brought forth a dark green bottle of ale and returned to the blanket to sit cross-legged before Shailiha.

  He removed the cork and took a long draft of the ale. His eyes went back to the corpse in the field, and he suddenly seemed to be far away. He was still looking out at the body when he finally said, ‘He was my friend.’

  A look of shock spread over Shailiha’s face. If she had not been with child, she would have taken a drink of the ale herself. She quickly removed the root from her mouth.

  ‘Your friend?’ she exclaimed. ‘That hideous thing just tried to kill us!’

  Wigg turned back to her, his face beginning to regain its usual strength and composure. She was relieved to see that Wigg was becoming Wigg again.

  ‘Phillius,’ he said softly. ‘That hideous thing, as you call it, that lies dead in the clearing at my own hand was my friend, and his name was Phillius.’

  He took another draft of ale. She was glad to see him finally smiling gently into her eyes. Perhaps the ale was helping. He sighed. ‘It requires some explanation.’ His voice had become barely audible.

  Shailiha arranged her legs into a more comfortable posture, raised her eyes to the old one, and tilted her head slightly. She was willing to invest the time to hear his explanation, whatever it was, and it was clear by her demeanor that she was not to be denied.

  The wizard pressed his lips together in a tight half smile and let out a deep breath as if he had been holding it in for years.

  ‘The creature that lies dead in the field is called a blood stalker,’ he began. ‘It is a mutant product of the Sorceresses’ War, protected from then until now by what are called time enchantments. We had thought him and all of his kind long since dead. There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of a blood stalker in over three centuries.’ He rubbed his lower lip back and forth slowly. How could one of their time enchantments have lasted this long? his racing mind asked. This should not be possible.

  ‘I thought you said his name was Phillius?’

  ‘It was. In truth, Princess, he was my friend and my mentor.’ He looked down at his hands as he laced his fingers before speaking again. ‘He was a wizard.’

  ‘A wizard?’ she exclaimed. ‘That ghastly thing? No wizard ever looked like that. It’s impossible.’ She was quite surprised that he was being so forthcoming with his answers. She knew he would not even have considered speaking to her of this if she had not been of endowed blood. The wizards of the Directorate, those six who had the greatest responsibility for victory in the Sorceresses’ War, preferred never to speak of their wartime experiences. Coming to the conclusion that she was about to hear a rare wizard’s story of the war, she schooled herself to look more respectful.

  He took another draft of the ale, cognizant of the subtle change in her demeanor.

  ‘During the war, many wizards died,’ he began. ‘At that time we actually were fearful that male endowed blood would become extinct. We never knew how many of us there were because then, unlike now, no birth records were ever kept. A child was simply known as either “endowed” or “common.” He or she could either be trained in the craft, or not. There was as yet no Directorate, and as far as we knew, the jewel called the Paragon did not exist. Wizards helped to train each other in the craft, but we were widely dispersed across the countryside, with no real sense of organization except for those of us living in the palace at Tammerland. Training was haphazard at best, and the craft itself was in only a rudimentary form of development. This is one of the reasons why the sorceresses almost won. They were better organized and had succeeded in pushing the boundaries of magic farther than we had, and were thus more powerful than we were. But because of the discovery of the Paragon, their advantage was not to last.’ He paused once again to take another swallow of ale.

  He frowned at his next thoughts. ‘It is not widely known today, but the sorceresses tried, whenever possible, not to kill wizards – they preferred to take them alive.’

  Before he continued he once again looked at his hands, the same hands that had just killed his one-time friend. ‘Captives of unendowed, or “common” blood, often were pressed into service in the sorceresses’ armies. But the various fates that the endowed ones suffered were far beyond description. Some were killed outright, some tortured for the sorceresses’ pleasure, and some turned into blood stalkers like poor Phillius. Others were left alive for yet different purposes.’ He turned his attention toward the crushed skull of the corpse in the field, and to the strange fog that had surrounded it. It had been over 300 years since he had seen such a haze, and it brought him no pleasure to have seen one again today.

  ‘What other purposes?’ she asked gently.

  He looked back at her with tired aquamarine eyes.

  ‘Breeding. Because the union of two endowed people is the most likely to produce an endowed child, they raped the wizards repeatedly, hoping for a pregnancy that would yield a special girl child to raise as a sorceress. The male babies were simply killed outright. We never understood the importance of such a child to them. Had they not spent so much of their power and their time trying to achieve this birth, we may never have prevailed. Inadvertently, they gave us the one thing we needed most: time.’ Again he paused, as though not wishing to relive the painful memories.

  The princess looked at the corpse lying in the hot afternoon sun. The fog around the body had dissipated, and hungry flies had begun to gather around the exposed brain to settle in dark clumps upon the yellow fluid. Feeling sick again, she returned her gaze to the old one, still feeling full of questions. This time it was she who wished to change the subject.

  ‘Surely Phillius, if he was a wizard, did not always look like that?’ she asked. She put the root back into her mouth.

  Wigg shook his head. ‘No. At one time he was a strong, handsome man. The change in his appearance was part of the mutation process forced upon him by the sorceresses. During the war, it was said that the process was so painful and happened so quickly that many of the wizards simply went insane. In that case, they had no use and they were killed. Only the strongest of them could withstand the transformation. Phillius was one of those, and his capture was a sad day for all of us.’

  Wigg closed his eyes. He knew that had Phillius survived he would have been an invaluable member of the Directorate, and his wisdom was sorely missed.

  ‘Then how did you know it was him?’ she queried. She was becoming more interested with every word.

  Wigg took another swallow of the ale, replacing the cork. He stood without speaking and walked to the dead blood stalker. Carefully avoiding the yellow fluid in the grass, he lifted up the inside of the thing’s left forearm so Shailiha could see it from where she was. He pointed with his other hand to an odd, bright red birthmark, then gently laid the forearm back upon the ground before returning to the princess.