The wilderlands, p.13
The Wilderlands, page 13
Woodwarblers wailed against bark and branch like war drums. Crows cawed in careful rhythm as they circled high above. Wrens rang out a tune of mourning as the travelers went on their way. The trees themselves hummed a croaking tune of doom and death. A single laughing-cat, far away, stung a note above it all; it was hard to know the cut of that laugh ‘cause all laughing-cat sounds seem as mockery.
But they were not hindered. No silver tips, no night-swoops, and the laughing-cat stayed his distance. They were allowed to go on their way—hard to say if this was wizard-will, Green taking pity on their plight, or Grandma Dirt knowing what’s best. But Knalc and Red didn’t care. Unimpeded, they passed into the wizard-growth.
They saw what Dhorena had moons back—a hut that wasn’t a hut, lit by light that couldn’t be, and a twisted wall of iron that seemed to have been summoned from the earth to protect whatever was behind it. The wizard was outside, cross-legged, staff on lap, and waiting.
The Wilderlands beat and sang and cawed and laughed louder around them as they drew closer.
Knalc’s voice was scarce louder than a breath. “Said there was such a thing as wizards, didn’t I?”
“A person in the woods, sitting,” Red said, self-blind to the miracles wrought around him. “I can only dread what magic might follow such a terrible thing.”
They stopped several sword lengths from the wizard.
When the wizard didn’t mind or note them none, Knalc spoke.
“You understand Wilder-speak?” Knalc asked.
The wizard beheld Knalc and nodded.
Afore Knalc could speak again, one of the crows in the murder-circle above fell on them like night, landing on a branch just above Red and Knalc.
“I do, Eye does,” said the crow. “But I understand Valforian tongue better.”
Both men set their hands to the blades at their side at the soul-sound coming from that crow.
Their startling made the wizard wheeze, humorsome.
Under those soot-shot, skim-smooth eyes there were teeth more akin to a skull’s than a living being’s, and through those time-tested teeth the wizard cackled. Yes, that laugh was cough-clouded, but it was still clear that brainrot had seeded itself in the wizard. Knalc noted this, but Red hadn’t witnessed brainrot afore.
“So,” said the crow for the wizard. “Why are you at my door?”
“We can be a bit more civil than that,” Red said, heart still hammering, looking from crow to caster. “Whom do we have the honor of meeting?”
“Blaez Xliv.”
Red leaned toward Blaez in not quite a bow. “My friend thinks you’re a wizard.”
“Do you not?”
“I had my … misgivings,” Red glanced again at the crow. “Is it true?”
The wizard laughed and the warbler spoke. “Why wouldn’t it be? Now answer me, what brings you to my door?”
“Searching for a girl,” Knalc said. “We’ve looked since before winter. Have you spotted anyone?”
The smile slid from the wizard’s lips. Fingers toyed some with the staff—looking away from Knalc and Red.
“What makes you think she’s here?”
“Her family crest,” Red said. “Painted in blood on a stone not two miles yon.”
The wizard mumbled some gib-speak afore rising to feet, staff held loose in hand. “Blood spots many stones in the Wilderlands.”
“Yes,” Red said, marking that metal-rod in case it took to marking him. “That’s why I think if I see a specific crest in blood, it means I’m near the thing I’m looking for.”
“We’re all searching for something.”
Caresome to not go threatening those who claimed to be wizards, Red rested his thumbs through his belt to show the knife—the Valforian steel Dhorena’s mother once carried with that same symbol held on its pommel. “You still haven’t answered our question. Have you seen anyone come through here?”
“What do you want with her?”
“Our want isn’t your worry,” Red said. “I take it you’ve seen her?”
Fingers thrummed against the steel of the staff. Feathers ruffled. “I can take you to her. So long as you are willing to trade.”
Red shook his head. “I’m looking for the girl. I’m not here to make bargains.”
The crow took flight.
The attack didn’t come from the staff. In honest, it didn’t come from the wizard at all, but the wizard was the root of the happening, true as breath.
The staff-less hand whipped under robes or flesh and pulled a wand.
“Shit,” Knalc breathed and flung himself to the dirt.
But Red didn’t have the measure of wizard-tricks. He didn’t think to dodge or duck until the happening had passed.
The wand glowed red. There came a sundering sound.
Hell-heat licked ‘em—when Red turned he was smacked to the ground, left to stun-stare next to Knalc.
An elm that must have been as old as Time was wreathed in wrathful red and orange and yellow flame. Ripped down the middle as if lightning-split, smoke and ash bled from the crater-crack and washed over the two men, stinging their eyes and lungs.
Brainrot laughter spilled gleefully from the wizard as the crow landed shoulder-wise. “Mortal men who come to me are here to do what I believe they are here to do. I believe you’re here to bargain.” A hairy hand pointed to the steel at Red’s waist. “You go showing off that steel. It looks mighty good. Give me that knife and I can show—not give—show you the girl.”
Horror-racked and fear-wrought, Red did just that—pulling knife from belt he threw it to the wizard’s feet.
The bird swooped to it and snatched the weapon for the wizard. Blaez let off some tiny laughs and then hid it away in a fold of flesh or robes. Standing, Blaez Xliv moved toward the hut that wasn’t a hut and motioned for the two men to follow.
I want you to remember children—you always have a choice in things. But that don’t matter, ‘cause you bein’ who you are can only ever make one choice at any given time-place. As long as you be you, you really don’t got much choice at all. So Knalc and Red—being Knalc and Red—did the only thing they could do being who they were: they followed after.
Behind them—the elm still roared with fire and pain and time, forgotten to the pyre of the ages.
I tell you, for the first time in breathing memory, the Wilderlands had gone silent and all through them there was only that fire roaring.
They followed Blaez Xliv to the iron-made wall while the wizard wrestled with some ingredients and utterings, back turned to Knalc and Red but with the crow ever watching. There was some rattling as the wizard unraveled the bewitchment. The metal gasped and swung open, welcoming them as best as cold things hewn and harvested from the earth can.
Stepping through, they were brought to the hut that wasn’t a hut. The light that couldn’t have been sun looked down on them as the wizard again unraveled the way forward. Just like the iron before it, the door opened and they went in.
I’m going to try, children. I’m going to try to tell you of this room, but I ain’t got words for what I don’t know.
That room had light with no roots or way floating over head to brighten a room of flasks made of metal and silver. Some of these flasks were marked by script, others by the faces of the damned. Stray grey vines or rope ran about to bind it all together in pagan harmony. Shelves with paper—bound, folded in animal flesh and unfrayed, if you can believe it. Too much paper to comprehend, piles beyond possibility. And there were windows the like of which you ain’t seen afore, showing not the other side of the wall, but a place beyond. All the room hummed with wizard-might. The Wilderland has its hum and wizard lairs have theirs—low and flavorless.
Red reached for one of the windows but Knalc stopped his hand and shook his head. “Better not.” Knalc himself was fighting a gut-yanking to reach through the windows himself, but he knew that any gut-yank you get while on wizard land is best fought against.
They walked on and Blaez Xliv led them through another door. This one had no enchantment. Blaez opened it and led them back to where she grew.
There was more smoke than air in that room.
Knalc’s feet crunched against leaves and vines. He thought he was under open sky for a breath, but no, it was far too dark. It was certainly a room, just more dirt and grass than floor, more growth and green than wall.
He and Red saw her at the same time.
She was wrapped in weeds and green—shaded to earth-like tones by roots sprung up from below which turned her toes and feet bramble-bound while bulbs popped from flesh and stretched sinew. She’d sprouted a garish green with garner-grown vines of vitriol winding about her waist and neck. Her eyes had taken the peal of poison, her face more fern than flesh. They wouldn’t have marked her human had they not seen the sword at her waist, constricted by vines and overgrowth, and had they not known her afore she succumbed to weed and wizard-green.
She didn’t seem to know them as they came in. She didn’t even seem alive by human measures.
Knalc could hear the roar of blood raging through Red followed in fast form by the roar spat from his tongue. “What the fuck is this! What have you done?”
The wizard laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and broke to breathe only to laugh and laugh and laugh again.
Red tried to move on the wizard, but Knalc held him back. Red reached for Knalc’s sword, but Knalc blocked it from him easy and held the man in place.
Blaez was still chortling as the crow put on a mocksome voice. “‘I need your help wizard! My mother, my brother, are both dead. You do magic. I know you bend life and death! Anything! Anything you ask for I’ll give. Help me! Teach me! Send me to them!” The wizard spat and walked to her, poking at what would have been her face with the end of his staff. “She’s with them now. Though it was a rank trade.”
Her face was stiff, she didn’t even seem to feel the prodding. Laugher cracked the wizard’s lips again.
Over the course of this, Red had gone cold-still. “You killed her then.”
“No. She wanted to see the dead and that’s what she is doing. She traded her most smothered secret to do so. But it was rotten.”
Red went even colder—his eyes blazing at the wizard. “What secret?”
“The girl implied she had secrets of the hidden chambers behind Illmiv’s walls,” The crow said. “But my green has been hard rooting through her mind and I haven’t turned up more than mutterings. The hardest secret to hit in there was that she loves her father, if you can believe it. Worthless. I let her keep it. Seemed to be more of a bruise to her brain than balm. But I don’t mind, I have a way through that wall now. And if I am wrong, I can bleed my hex from her and see her promise kept.”
Red turned pale.
“Maybe we can make another deal,” Knalc said. “Wizards like to make deals don’t they?”
Slow-like, the wizard’s head went cocked, noggining on the thought for a moment.
“I want the girl.”
“You already have the girl,”
“One cannot own themselves,” the crow said. “I can’t keep her past her promise unless you grant me leave to. That is the way of things.”
Red’s teeth were grinding. “And what would you do with her?”
The wizard gave a tiny laugh now. The crow’s words went so low as to be hard-heard. “My want isn’t your worry.”
“Cut her down.”
“No.”
“Cut … her … down.”
“Nay.”
Red relaxed and Knalc thought he had resigned himself—that they would begin bargaining now.
Not so.
A flare of strength surged through Red. Even with one arm, he somehow wrestled and slipped from Knalc’s grasp in seconds. At first, Knalc thought he was running right for Blaez—the wizard thought like and readied staff.
But Red veered away from Blaez as magic burst from the staff. Reality cracked for just a moment, but missed Red, making a scattered hole in the wall through which light seeped in.
Red went for Dhorena—the wizard caught this and swung the staff hard at him. But Red spun away, leaving the staff to wave through only empty air.
He was close enough now to seize his need from Dhorena’s side.
Lightning lurched his hand—Red reared for his friend, his death-maker. It ripped through root and vine easy as flesh and vein. He lacked a hand and was time-rusted, but he knew his steel and it knew him. It hummed for him bard-bars that come with blood and battle.
“Cut her free.” He didn’t speak to the wizard now, but to Knalc—those were the only words he wasted.
Though steel had lessened him, though time had frayed him, though Wilderlands had turned him ragged—Red moved fast and smooth and death-poised as ever. Such a storm of blows sliced and slashed at Blaez that no magic or inhuman-might could Blaez call on while being driven from the room, already blood sopped.
The wizard had no time to remember that, in leading these strangers in, all wards were rendered wide open, meaning Death could walk wherever he willed.
Knalc worked fast to cut Dhorena loose. His mind was made foggy by the smoke and he found it hard telling where green gave way to flesh. If he did slice skin, the girl didn’t seem to know or feel or care. She just stared, unblinking and green-yellow.
Red was making the battle hard fought. The wizard was trying to conjure some wicked trick to get a fighting edge on Red who wasn’t havin’ it. Blaez tried to twist and better aim that staff—but Red would lean in hard and push the rod skyward. Blaez reached for the wand that had struck down the tree—Red batted the wizard’s hand away. Blaez dove for cover in the lair and Red stormed right after, not granting Blaez breath or breadth.
The crow soared and cawed frightfully overhead, molting-mad and peppering his bleeding master with feathers as if such could clot the growing culmination of wounds.
They say wizard blood is magic. That you can make poison or poth from it depending on the goal of the hands ‘hind the brewing. But the important thing is this: they bleed. Any beast or being that bleeds can be killed and Blaez was bleeding heavy.
The wizard’s robe-flesh had gone red with leaking life. Blaez knew a thing more than feathers must be done fast or else Red would bring Death.
Muttering a charm of speed, Blaez rushed past Red. In going, the wizard got a tendon near torn by Red’s steel-snickering. Blaez burst from the hut, barely living and hard of breath, Blaez spun to ground, landing gut to dirt. Then, rolling over, took quick aim.
Red was raging right behind, all steel and vengeance, fire and fury and despair.
For a beat, Blaez saw the whole of the Wilderlands reflected in that Valforian steel.
Blaez let loose a blast of magic.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiichhhooow!!!
Reality ripped.
You ever feel the touch of wizard might through your flesh? It’s a rancid blow. Like your insides are burning up and fluttering out of you—oft times they’re doing one or both. Worst of all, that magic is so quick you can’t see it. Once a wizard has hard-locked eyes set on you, ain’t no dodging it.
Red was fast. But not that fast.
His left side was blown away in a burst of flesh and bone.
Marrow and malice fell from him. He staggered, clutching his gasping wound.
He had to catch himself with his sword, wielding it like a staff. He seemed to be about to speak—and spat blood instead.
Blaez and him looked at one another, their blood mingled bosom-close in the dirt and feathers.
Then, slow-like, rage swelled and sorrow deepened, and Red’s eyes became like a funeral-pyre, mad for more kindling.
Though his guts were on the ground, he stood and walked toward the wizard.
The crow swooped with stabbing talons, but fell to Red’s sword like a fly licked off the wind.
The Wilderlands had gotten back to laughing. Death had taken notice, and walked closer now.
It was hard to see the blood covering his coat ‘cause of the red.
Blaez backed away, shocked that Red was on his feet at all. He ought to be dead, yet Red walked forward. Blaez started pulling powder and stone from flesh-cloth to prepare more bursts of magic. But shaking hands are hard to do spell work with. Blaez backed-up further still.
The burning elm looked on and Red did not slow.
Blaez dropped powder and stones and they were scattered to the wind. The wizard screamed.
Red smiled a crimson smile. He readied his sword.
It was then that Knalc came out of the hut—carrying Dhorena, neither plant nor person, in his arms. He saw the two and spotted the bird body and the trail of blood leading toward them—and saw the wizard reach for the wand.
“No!” Knalc shouted.
Hard to say just how it happened next.
The wand glowed red.
The man in the red coat must have heard Knalc shout or saw the wand-reach, but he couldn’t stop what happened next.
Red went up in smoke and fire.
“… nnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooo …” the mass of skin and bramble that was Dhorena groaned—sounding less like a voice and more like bark creaking or wind moving through leaves.
The wizard let out another laugh. Triumphant and imperious—but Blaez’s lips slipped to celebration too soon.
With the might of a god pummeling a soul from Hush-bee Mountain, Red threw his sword right through Blaez’s wrenched heart.
The wizard’s laugh turned to a bleeding shout and then a cry! And now Red was laughing—though he burned—high and clear above it all. Laughing with the Wilderlands.
With what strength she had, Dhorena rolled out of Knalc’s hands and began to claw and root her way toward the burning man.
“… nnnnnnnnooooooooo …”
And Death came there at last to find the skewered wizard.
Remember, Death takes no joy in the work assigned. But there was perhaps a smile on ol’ Death’s face while pruning the soul of that skewered sorcerer.
But they were not hindered. No silver tips, no night-swoops, and the laughing-cat stayed his distance. They were allowed to go on their way—hard to say if this was wizard-will, Green taking pity on their plight, or Grandma Dirt knowing what’s best. But Knalc and Red didn’t care. Unimpeded, they passed into the wizard-growth.
They saw what Dhorena had moons back—a hut that wasn’t a hut, lit by light that couldn’t be, and a twisted wall of iron that seemed to have been summoned from the earth to protect whatever was behind it. The wizard was outside, cross-legged, staff on lap, and waiting.
The Wilderlands beat and sang and cawed and laughed louder around them as they drew closer.
Knalc’s voice was scarce louder than a breath. “Said there was such a thing as wizards, didn’t I?”
“A person in the woods, sitting,” Red said, self-blind to the miracles wrought around him. “I can only dread what magic might follow such a terrible thing.”
They stopped several sword lengths from the wizard.
When the wizard didn’t mind or note them none, Knalc spoke.
“You understand Wilder-speak?” Knalc asked.
The wizard beheld Knalc and nodded.
Afore Knalc could speak again, one of the crows in the murder-circle above fell on them like night, landing on a branch just above Red and Knalc.
“I do, Eye does,” said the crow. “But I understand Valforian tongue better.”
Both men set their hands to the blades at their side at the soul-sound coming from that crow.
Their startling made the wizard wheeze, humorsome.
Under those soot-shot, skim-smooth eyes there were teeth more akin to a skull’s than a living being’s, and through those time-tested teeth the wizard cackled. Yes, that laugh was cough-clouded, but it was still clear that brainrot had seeded itself in the wizard. Knalc noted this, but Red hadn’t witnessed brainrot afore.
“So,” said the crow for the wizard. “Why are you at my door?”
“We can be a bit more civil than that,” Red said, heart still hammering, looking from crow to caster. “Whom do we have the honor of meeting?”
“Blaez Xliv.”
Red leaned toward Blaez in not quite a bow. “My friend thinks you’re a wizard.”
“Do you not?”
“I had my … misgivings,” Red glanced again at the crow. “Is it true?”
The wizard laughed and the warbler spoke. “Why wouldn’t it be? Now answer me, what brings you to my door?”
“Searching for a girl,” Knalc said. “We’ve looked since before winter. Have you spotted anyone?”
The smile slid from the wizard’s lips. Fingers toyed some with the staff—looking away from Knalc and Red.
“What makes you think she’s here?”
“Her family crest,” Red said. “Painted in blood on a stone not two miles yon.”
The wizard mumbled some gib-speak afore rising to feet, staff held loose in hand. “Blood spots many stones in the Wilderlands.”
“Yes,” Red said, marking that metal-rod in case it took to marking him. “That’s why I think if I see a specific crest in blood, it means I’m near the thing I’m looking for.”
“We’re all searching for something.”
Caresome to not go threatening those who claimed to be wizards, Red rested his thumbs through his belt to show the knife—the Valforian steel Dhorena’s mother once carried with that same symbol held on its pommel. “You still haven’t answered our question. Have you seen anyone come through here?”
“What do you want with her?”
“Our want isn’t your worry,” Red said. “I take it you’ve seen her?”
Fingers thrummed against the steel of the staff. Feathers ruffled. “I can take you to her. So long as you are willing to trade.”
Red shook his head. “I’m looking for the girl. I’m not here to make bargains.”
The crow took flight.
The attack didn’t come from the staff. In honest, it didn’t come from the wizard at all, but the wizard was the root of the happening, true as breath.
The staff-less hand whipped under robes or flesh and pulled a wand.
“Shit,” Knalc breathed and flung himself to the dirt.
But Red didn’t have the measure of wizard-tricks. He didn’t think to dodge or duck until the happening had passed.
The wand glowed red. There came a sundering sound.
Hell-heat licked ‘em—when Red turned he was smacked to the ground, left to stun-stare next to Knalc.
An elm that must have been as old as Time was wreathed in wrathful red and orange and yellow flame. Ripped down the middle as if lightning-split, smoke and ash bled from the crater-crack and washed over the two men, stinging their eyes and lungs.
Brainrot laughter spilled gleefully from the wizard as the crow landed shoulder-wise. “Mortal men who come to me are here to do what I believe they are here to do. I believe you’re here to bargain.” A hairy hand pointed to the steel at Red’s waist. “You go showing off that steel. It looks mighty good. Give me that knife and I can show—not give—show you the girl.”
Horror-racked and fear-wrought, Red did just that—pulling knife from belt he threw it to the wizard’s feet.
The bird swooped to it and snatched the weapon for the wizard. Blaez let off some tiny laughs and then hid it away in a fold of flesh or robes. Standing, Blaez Xliv moved toward the hut that wasn’t a hut and motioned for the two men to follow.
I want you to remember children—you always have a choice in things. But that don’t matter, ‘cause you bein’ who you are can only ever make one choice at any given time-place. As long as you be you, you really don’t got much choice at all. So Knalc and Red—being Knalc and Red—did the only thing they could do being who they were: they followed after.
Behind them—the elm still roared with fire and pain and time, forgotten to the pyre of the ages.
I tell you, for the first time in breathing memory, the Wilderlands had gone silent and all through them there was only that fire roaring.
They followed Blaez Xliv to the iron-made wall while the wizard wrestled with some ingredients and utterings, back turned to Knalc and Red but with the crow ever watching. There was some rattling as the wizard unraveled the bewitchment. The metal gasped and swung open, welcoming them as best as cold things hewn and harvested from the earth can.
Stepping through, they were brought to the hut that wasn’t a hut. The light that couldn’t have been sun looked down on them as the wizard again unraveled the way forward. Just like the iron before it, the door opened and they went in.
I’m going to try, children. I’m going to try to tell you of this room, but I ain’t got words for what I don’t know.
That room had light with no roots or way floating over head to brighten a room of flasks made of metal and silver. Some of these flasks were marked by script, others by the faces of the damned. Stray grey vines or rope ran about to bind it all together in pagan harmony. Shelves with paper—bound, folded in animal flesh and unfrayed, if you can believe it. Too much paper to comprehend, piles beyond possibility. And there were windows the like of which you ain’t seen afore, showing not the other side of the wall, but a place beyond. All the room hummed with wizard-might. The Wilderland has its hum and wizard lairs have theirs—low and flavorless.
Red reached for one of the windows but Knalc stopped his hand and shook his head. “Better not.” Knalc himself was fighting a gut-yanking to reach through the windows himself, but he knew that any gut-yank you get while on wizard land is best fought against.
They walked on and Blaez Xliv led them through another door. This one had no enchantment. Blaez opened it and led them back to where she grew.
There was more smoke than air in that room.
Knalc’s feet crunched against leaves and vines. He thought he was under open sky for a breath, but no, it was far too dark. It was certainly a room, just more dirt and grass than floor, more growth and green than wall.
He and Red saw her at the same time.
She was wrapped in weeds and green—shaded to earth-like tones by roots sprung up from below which turned her toes and feet bramble-bound while bulbs popped from flesh and stretched sinew. She’d sprouted a garish green with garner-grown vines of vitriol winding about her waist and neck. Her eyes had taken the peal of poison, her face more fern than flesh. They wouldn’t have marked her human had they not seen the sword at her waist, constricted by vines and overgrowth, and had they not known her afore she succumbed to weed and wizard-green.
She didn’t seem to know them as they came in. She didn’t even seem alive by human measures.
Knalc could hear the roar of blood raging through Red followed in fast form by the roar spat from his tongue. “What the fuck is this! What have you done?”
The wizard laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and broke to breathe only to laugh and laugh and laugh again.
Red tried to move on the wizard, but Knalc held him back. Red reached for Knalc’s sword, but Knalc blocked it from him easy and held the man in place.
Blaez was still chortling as the crow put on a mocksome voice. “‘I need your help wizard! My mother, my brother, are both dead. You do magic. I know you bend life and death! Anything! Anything you ask for I’ll give. Help me! Teach me! Send me to them!” The wizard spat and walked to her, poking at what would have been her face with the end of his staff. “She’s with them now. Though it was a rank trade.”
Her face was stiff, she didn’t even seem to feel the prodding. Laugher cracked the wizard’s lips again.
Over the course of this, Red had gone cold-still. “You killed her then.”
“No. She wanted to see the dead and that’s what she is doing. She traded her most smothered secret to do so. But it was rotten.”
Red went even colder—his eyes blazing at the wizard. “What secret?”
“The girl implied she had secrets of the hidden chambers behind Illmiv’s walls,” The crow said. “But my green has been hard rooting through her mind and I haven’t turned up more than mutterings. The hardest secret to hit in there was that she loves her father, if you can believe it. Worthless. I let her keep it. Seemed to be more of a bruise to her brain than balm. But I don’t mind, I have a way through that wall now. And if I am wrong, I can bleed my hex from her and see her promise kept.”
Red turned pale.
“Maybe we can make another deal,” Knalc said. “Wizards like to make deals don’t they?”
Slow-like, the wizard’s head went cocked, noggining on the thought for a moment.
“I want the girl.”
“You already have the girl,”
“One cannot own themselves,” the crow said. “I can’t keep her past her promise unless you grant me leave to. That is the way of things.”
Red’s teeth were grinding. “And what would you do with her?”
The wizard gave a tiny laugh now. The crow’s words went so low as to be hard-heard. “My want isn’t your worry.”
“Cut her down.”
“No.”
“Cut … her … down.”
“Nay.”
Red relaxed and Knalc thought he had resigned himself—that they would begin bargaining now.
Not so.
A flare of strength surged through Red. Even with one arm, he somehow wrestled and slipped from Knalc’s grasp in seconds. At first, Knalc thought he was running right for Blaez—the wizard thought like and readied staff.
But Red veered away from Blaez as magic burst from the staff. Reality cracked for just a moment, but missed Red, making a scattered hole in the wall through which light seeped in.
Red went for Dhorena—the wizard caught this and swung the staff hard at him. But Red spun away, leaving the staff to wave through only empty air.
He was close enough now to seize his need from Dhorena’s side.
Lightning lurched his hand—Red reared for his friend, his death-maker. It ripped through root and vine easy as flesh and vein. He lacked a hand and was time-rusted, but he knew his steel and it knew him. It hummed for him bard-bars that come with blood and battle.
“Cut her free.” He didn’t speak to the wizard now, but to Knalc—those were the only words he wasted.
Though steel had lessened him, though time had frayed him, though Wilderlands had turned him ragged—Red moved fast and smooth and death-poised as ever. Such a storm of blows sliced and slashed at Blaez that no magic or inhuman-might could Blaez call on while being driven from the room, already blood sopped.
The wizard had no time to remember that, in leading these strangers in, all wards were rendered wide open, meaning Death could walk wherever he willed.
Knalc worked fast to cut Dhorena loose. His mind was made foggy by the smoke and he found it hard telling where green gave way to flesh. If he did slice skin, the girl didn’t seem to know or feel or care. She just stared, unblinking and green-yellow.
Red was making the battle hard fought. The wizard was trying to conjure some wicked trick to get a fighting edge on Red who wasn’t havin’ it. Blaez tried to twist and better aim that staff—but Red would lean in hard and push the rod skyward. Blaez reached for the wand that had struck down the tree—Red batted the wizard’s hand away. Blaez dove for cover in the lair and Red stormed right after, not granting Blaez breath or breadth.
The crow soared and cawed frightfully overhead, molting-mad and peppering his bleeding master with feathers as if such could clot the growing culmination of wounds.
They say wizard blood is magic. That you can make poison or poth from it depending on the goal of the hands ‘hind the brewing. But the important thing is this: they bleed. Any beast or being that bleeds can be killed and Blaez was bleeding heavy.
The wizard’s robe-flesh had gone red with leaking life. Blaez knew a thing more than feathers must be done fast or else Red would bring Death.
Muttering a charm of speed, Blaez rushed past Red. In going, the wizard got a tendon near torn by Red’s steel-snickering. Blaez burst from the hut, barely living and hard of breath, Blaez spun to ground, landing gut to dirt. Then, rolling over, took quick aim.
Red was raging right behind, all steel and vengeance, fire and fury and despair.
For a beat, Blaez saw the whole of the Wilderlands reflected in that Valforian steel.
Blaez let loose a blast of magic.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiichhhooow!!!
Reality ripped.
You ever feel the touch of wizard might through your flesh? It’s a rancid blow. Like your insides are burning up and fluttering out of you—oft times they’re doing one or both. Worst of all, that magic is so quick you can’t see it. Once a wizard has hard-locked eyes set on you, ain’t no dodging it.
Red was fast. But not that fast.
His left side was blown away in a burst of flesh and bone.
Marrow and malice fell from him. He staggered, clutching his gasping wound.
He had to catch himself with his sword, wielding it like a staff. He seemed to be about to speak—and spat blood instead.
Blaez and him looked at one another, their blood mingled bosom-close in the dirt and feathers.
Then, slow-like, rage swelled and sorrow deepened, and Red’s eyes became like a funeral-pyre, mad for more kindling.
Though his guts were on the ground, he stood and walked toward the wizard.
The crow swooped with stabbing talons, but fell to Red’s sword like a fly licked off the wind.
The Wilderlands had gotten back to laughing. Death had taken notice, and walked closer now.
It was hard to see the blood covering his coat ‘cause of the red.
Blaez backed away, shocked that Red was on his feet at all. He ought to be dead, yet Red walked forward. Blaez started pulling powder and stone from flesh-cloth to prepare more bursts of magic. But shaking hands are hard to do spell work with. Blaez backed-up further still.
The burning elm looked on and Red did not slow.
Blaez dropped powder and stones and they were scattered to the wind. The wizard screamed.
Red smiled a crimson smile. He readied his sword.
It was then that Knalc came out of the hut—carrying Dhorena, neither plant nor person, in his arms. He saw the two and spotted the bird body and the trail of blood leading toward them—and saw the wizard reach for the wand.
“No!” Knalc shouted.
Hard to say just how it happened next.
The wand glowed red.
The man in the red coat must have heard Knalc shout or saw the wand-reach, but he couldn’t stop what happened next.
Red went up in smoke and fire.
“… nnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooo …” the mass of skin and bramble that was Dhorena groaned—sounding less like a voice and more like bark creaking or wind moving through leaves.
The wizard let out another laugh. Triumphant and imperious—but Blaez’s lips slipped to celebration too soon.
With the might of a god pummeling a soul from Hush-bee Mountain, Red threw his sword right through Blaez’s wrenched heart.
The wizard’s laugh turned to a bleeding shout and then a cry! And now Red was laughing—though he burned—high and clear above it all. Laughing with the Wilderlands.
With what strength she had, Dhorena rolled out of Knalc’s hands and began to claw and root her way toward the burning man.
“… nnnnnnnnooooooooo …”
And Death came there at last to find the skewered wizard.
Remember, Death takes no joy in the work assigned. But there was perhaps a smile on ol’ Death’s face while pruning the soul of that skewered sorcerer.
