Tuesday's Short - Magick on the Forest's Edge

This week’s short story takes us from a fantasy tale of one very lucky servant to the fantasy world of Tallameera where two siblings discover their magic to save a dying fairy. Welcome to Magick on the Forest's Edge.

Forced to flee with her village, priestly apprentice, Althessa, discovers that danger comes in many guises and salvation is often unexpected. When their undead pursuers are slain by an unknown force, Althessa assists her mistress in consecrating their remains to ensure they cannot return from the dead, yet again. But magick calls from a nearby forest, and another life is in danger. One of those responsible for bringing down their pursuers is balanced on the edge of death. With the priests too busy to assist, and only her wizardly brother to assist, can she perform the healing required, or will the attempt bring death to all who dare it?

Magick on the Forest's Edge

They were three weeks into their flight before the forest came into view. It had been hard, moving an entire village with little more than a night’s notice, harder still to avoid the undead warriors pursuing them. Winter was drawing perilously near. It meant respite from the endless pursuit, but certain destruction if shelter for the season wasn’t found.

Althessa was wakened by Rowany, her mentor and priestess to Beresia. Having slept the day, they hurried to receive the evening meal Althessa’s mother, Mallee, and the other village women had prepared.

It was bread, cold mutton, and cheese, again, but no one minded enough to complain. The food was filling and took little time to prepare and consume. Time took precedence over even the smallest of matters in their flight, and the laird had promised a change to their diet as soon as they were free of Escarlion’s borders, and the creatures on their trail.

Once they’d eaten, Rowany took Althessa to join the other priests in their evening supplications. Tonight their prayers would call the starlight and the snow breezes; one to guide them, the others to cover their tracks.

Althessa rejoiced in the prayers. She could feel herself growing in Beresia’s favor and power each time she communed with the goddess. She reveled in the goddess’s pleasure, rejoicing in the service she had found.

Even the king’s prejudice against the priesthoods could not spoil her joy. Althessa lifted her voice and blended it with the prayers of the other priests, calling the goddess’s attention to the villagers’ need once more. And, once more, Althessa felt the gods answer in chorus and her eyes filling with tears of joy at their reply.

She saw the intensity of her feelings reflected in the faces of the other priests. All had had felt the comfort of their gods, before, but this chorus of gods was something still new to them, and they treasured it.

The starlight shone around them, gilding the coming night in silver. Althessa stared in wonder. Around her, the same wonder touched all the villagers’ faces, as they arranged themselves in the marching order dictated by their laird. Tonight they would reach the forest’s edge, and safety.

Later that evening, when the meal was over and the fullness of night had come, the villagers left the copse on the hill, descending to travel along the valley floor. The going was easier at the foot of the valley, and they were less likely to be seen from a distance.

The breezes summoned by the priests divided. Half twirled on ahead, clearing a path through the deep drifts left by the day’s snowfall. The other half pushed the snow back into place behind them.

They would reach the forest before dawn.

Althessa stumbled beside her mistress and felt Rowany’s hand on her arm, steadying her. The low path seemed to go on forever. Althessa sighed, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other.

When Rowany stopped beside her, Althessa stopped, also, and wondered if she would be able to gather the energy to start walking again. The stench of something burnt, or dead, fouled the air.

Althessa lifted her head. Something dead? Her gaze sought Rowany’s face and she saw that it had grown as still as a mask. The laird was speaking.

Now Althessa understood the stillness in Rowany’s face. Her mistress was listening to the laird, using magic to gather words too far away to hear. Well, she could do that too. Althessa drew a little of the goddess’s power and formed it into a carrier of sound. The laird was at the front of the villagers. He had insisted on leading them, as always. Rowany and Althessa were somewhere in the middle.

Althessa reached out with the listening power, and caught the laird’s words with it.

“...go and see what makes that stench,” the laird was saying.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yessir.”

Althessa stifled a gasp of protest as she recognized Neia and Taloc’s voices. She could not bear to think of losing them so soon after they had come home.

She heard the thud hoofbeats, as her sister and future brother-in-law wheeled their horses and rode away. Althessa withdrew the power. The laird would say no more until his scouts returned. At his signal, she settled down to wait with the other villages. Pre-dawn stillness closed around them, as the hoofbeats faded. The enclosing shadow of this darkest time of night should have oppressed her, but instead gave her peace.

Instead of seeing it as the king’s time of power, Althessa thought of it as an ally. She thought of it as a friend who wrapped his dark cloak about the villagers and concealed them from the king’s sight. Her thoughts were broken as Rowany stood, and walked purposefully towards the laird. Althessa scrambled to her feet, and hurried to catch up.

Her mistress said nothing, and Althessa was surprised to sense neither amusement nor anger at her inattentiveness. Only their quick footsteps broke the stillness, their footsteps and growing thud of returning horses.

They reached the laird as Neia and Taloc returned. The scouts did not speak, although the sweat on their horses’ flanks warned of trouble ahead. When the pair had dismounted and stood before the laird, they looked furtively at the priests and house guard crowding about him, scanning the faces closest them.

After a long pause, the scouts exchanged glances, and then Taloc spoke. He spoke in the low tones of a man who does not want his words to spread beyond the ears of those needing to hear them. Althessa strained to listen.

“We found the patrol we saw this morning,” he said. “We need not fear it.”

“And?”

“There is no sign of whatever caused its slaughter. I sense no danger to our travels.”

The laird said nothing in answer to this. He bowed his head as though in thought, then raised it to look at the eastern sky. There was no threat of full day, but they all knew they had little time.

“I will go with you and see for myself,” he said, before turning to the forester and head of his guard. “Take my people into the forest fringe. Lead them towards the river. Hide them at dawn if you think there is need. I charge you with their care.”

He gestured to one of the priests.

“Go with them. That way you will be able to contact me through the power of the gods.”

The priest bobbed his head and crossed to the forester and guard captain.

“I will do as you ask,” he said, and they nodded.

Satisfied that his wishes would be obeyed, the laird turned to the rest of the priests and indicated Taloc and Neia.

“We will follow these two and make sure the dead truly rest before we join the others.”

He paused as his eyes saw Althessa, standing by Rowany’s side.

“She cannot come,” he said.

“She will have to,” Rowany replied, “or are you implying that she might see worse than she has already?”

The laird looked as though he thought of arguing, then shut his mouth with a snap and turned back to Neia and her fiancé.

“You will lead the way,” he ordered.

No one noticed the slight figure of a boy slip away from the villagers and follow them. Only the snow breezes saw him, and they waited for him to pass before replacing the snow in his steps. Faran did not want to miss anything his laird had found.

It did not take the small company long to reach the carnage discovered by the scouts. There were bodies strewn amongst the trees at the edge of the forest. The stench rose from them in a sickening cloud.

Someone gagged on the smell of it, and was sick in the bushes fringing forest depths. When he returned, only the pallor of his skin gave testimony to his trials. No one laughed; the young soldier would not be the only one to lose his breakfast over this.

Faran slipped through the edge of the gathered priests. He followed Rowany and Althessa, not drawing any attention to himself. After all, those present expected to see a youngster beside Beresia’s priestess—what difference two?

Especially amidst this, he thought to himself, surveying the wreckage of bodies about them.

Althessa looked up from the body Rowany was blessing so that its spirit would stay at rest. There would be a fire today. These remains would have to be burnt. The smoke would act like a beacon.

Other thoughts kept Faran quiet. Something was pulling at his newly found sense of magic, something that reached through the tingling residue of spent power to tug at his soul.

It was like an itch on a summer’s day. It needed to be scratched, demanded his attention. Faran looked around, trying to see what caused it.

He saw nothing. He looked again, both trying to see if he had missed it, and to make sure no one was watching him. He was clear. Everyone was too busy with the death rites to notice him.

He held himself still, not noticing when Rowany moved on to the next corpse. There was something else, something magical—and not far away. He glanced back down at the corpse Rowany had been inspecting, and noticed the weapon at its side. Residual magic jarred against living magic. A residing sense of evil scarred the sense of wonder the living magic roused.

Faran stepped away from it. When he found his power, he vowed, such weapons would meet their downfall through the creations of his hands. The living magic jangled at his nerves and he began moving towards it.

*   *   *

Althessa was moving also. She had been overawed by the sense of evil she felt coming from the body of the undead soldiers, but there had been something else as well.

She closed her eyes. There! Without the interference of her sight, she could sense it—a need, a hurt that required healing. Opening her eyes, Althessa gripped and held that sense of need.

Rowany had moved on, leaving the purified remains of one corpse for the still-tainted body of another. Althessa looked for her mistress and saw her bend over the second body. Now she knew she wouldn’t be able to interrupt. Rowany had begun the rites to settle the soldier’s spirit and could not be disturbed.

The need pulled at her—demanding—an ache in her spirit. Althessa took a few steps towards it. She reached a thicker stand of trees and looked back at Rowany. Maybe her mistress had finished…

Rowany began the second sing-song verse in the litany, and did not look away from the body. Althessa sighed and stepped away, threading her way through the attendant priests and into the forest itself.

The bushes thinned a little as she progressed towards the need’s origin, and the trees grew steadily further apart. Althessa breathed a prayer to the goddess and felt the comfort of the Beresia’s touch. Drawing courage from that, Althessa stepped resolutely forward.

*   *   *

Faran stopped. There was something else in the trees with him. Its feet made the dry leaves of the fall crackle, and twigs snap as it approached. He found shelter beside a fallen log, and waited for whatever it was to pass.

The thing came closer, almost as though it had been following him. Faran pressed against the tree trunk and held his breath. The sense of magic pulled at him but he resisted.

Better he should find out what walked in his wake, than let it find him unready. A patch of green flashed between the grey-brown trees and he tensed. He caught sight of it again, and again. Each time it was nearer. Faran waited. He did not expect to see his sister step out of a clump of bushes.

Faran watched as she paused, frowning. His gaze never left her as she turned and kept walking. It was as though she was looking for something, as though something drew her towards itself.

He paused, suddenly conscious of the magical drawing he felt. Althessa was walking towards it. He stood up, letting the leaves crunch underneath him as he did so.

Althessa spun about to face him. A little of the tension left her face as she recognized him.

“Faran!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d tag along with you and the laird,” he answered, “then I felt...” He paused, wanting, but reluctant, to share the sensation of living magic he felt.

Althessa ignored his half-finished sentence.

“You felt it too?” she asked.

Faran looked at her, saw how her eyes shone with the excitement of it, and could not deny he shared what she felt. He nodded. They did not say anything else. Words seemed somehow inadequate. A bond grew between them that superseded speaking, and they turned in the direction of the power and its need.

Neither could not see its source but they followed its insistent pull, hurrying their steps as need grew to desperation, and urgency threaded its demands. Something needed them, was calling to them both, and they had no choice but to answer.

*   *   *

The defender despaired. Death’s hand had touched him. A weapon of unclean, unhallowed origin had parted his flesh, shredding it to tatters. He clung to life in his cradle of snow, and watched it fading from him.

The sound of footsteps on the snow and leaves disturbed him. He almost allowed the last tendrils of life to fall away, but voices intruded.

Children! These were not the voices of warriors. The defender struggled to open his eyes, then closed them in disappointment. Bah! Human children—what good were they?

“There!”

That explosion of sound made him wince. Surely they did not mean him?

“Yes,” the other replied, a girl child, he pondered idly. “I see him.”

“Can we touch him?” The girl’s voice was timid now.

The boy-child answered with uncertainty.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to if I’m to get the magic to work.”

“I too, if I’m to ask the Lady for her aid.”

There was silence as the pair came to a silent agreement.

Something special there, the defender thought, feeling his life force ebb further. They understand each other perfectly yet I hear no words.

Someone raised his shoulders from the snow, careful not to damage the joints of his wings. The girl child gasped, and the defender smiled weakly to himself. She had seen his wings, then—or what had become of them.

Another pair of hands descended, straightening his wings, and adding deeper shades of pain to the agony he already felt. He studied it, seeing how his life-force rallied against it, and marveling.

When his wings had been spread carefully in their proper shape, he heard the girl’s voice once more. It was a prayer, with a single goddess named.

Beresia? he wondered, watching the darkness of death creeping towards him. A human goddess?

It didn’t seem to matter to the girl that he wasn’t human, that he was fey—a creature of myth and legend. Her voice rose in a sing-song prayer to her deity, and held no doubts that her deity would answer.

The darkness swirled closer, and agony became a flaring light against it. The boy-child had lain him on his side. The defender waited, wishing he could stand to meet that encroaching night, wishing he had died in battle as a young warrior should.

Now the boy-child raised his voice, its tones slightly harsher and unpracticed in melody. The faerie sighed. To die with that cacophony in his ears.

Worse still, he thought, relaxing on the dark waves that mingled with the gold of his life and the multi-colored bruising of his injuries. Worse still to live and be indebted to human children for his life.

A strange warmth filled him, spreading from where the girl child’s hands still rested on the ragged fragments of his wings. Fire flowed along the broken vanes, liquid fire burned through the tattered strips of wing membrane.

The defender screamed. The cacophony of chants faltered, strengthened, flowed over and around him. The fire had taken the remnants of his wings! He could not feel them anymore. He struggled to rise, and felt none of the magical energy that usually filled him when he fought. He was powerless, helpless against the hands that pinned him to the ground. The fire from his wings was spreading.

He felt the fierceness of it in the wing joints, in his shoulders, in his back. He felt… he felt the… His magic was returning! The arcane essence that made up his soul was coming back. It was coming back! That essence filled the sea beneath him with summer gold and winter silver. It came to him with the warm bronze of autumn, the pale turquoise of spring skies.

The defender basked in it, feeling the warmth of a strange fire burning through him, and not caring anymore. Slowly, the cacophony of the children’s music faded. Their hands lifted away.

He lay there with his eyes closed, the coolness of the ground beneath him a balm to the fire in his wings. His wings! He’d thought them burnt away, melted by the heat of a human god’s healing. He sensed the children waiting.

They were waiting, he realized with a touch of bitter regret, for him to open his eyes and acknowledge the debt he owed them. He flexed the magic within him, unaware of how it made a shimmer of light pulse across his body.

The children drew back.

“He lives.” The girl’s voice was matter-of fact.

He did not see the boy nod in reply. They were kneeling quietly beside him, when he opened his eyes.

They did not say anything as he rose and twisted about to see the state of his wings. His wings weren’t the baby-fresh creations he had feared. The goddess served by the girl-child seemed to understand at least that much of the fey. She had left the old membrane, not replaced it. New membrane filled in the spaces between the tatters left by the undead’s blade. It partially overlay and secured the join between tears.

The defender stretched his wings with care, afraid the healing was not complete. Relief was a palpable blow when he realized the healing was complete, and that it was perfect in its completion. He could not fault it. He would carry the scars of a seasoned warrior and not need to bear the taunts of an untried youngling. It would be known what he had faced and it would be acknowledged.

Acknowledged. The word stirred other memories, other words of honor. He owed his life to these children. He owed them his life. The defender snapped his wings closed, feeling the color of his shame rising to his face. How could he owe humans his life? He studied the youngsters before him.

They watched him unperturbed. They did not seem to realize the trouble they had brought. Now the tattered scarring on his wings would be a symbol of shame, as well as a badge of prowess.

The defender bowed his head. One of the children made to stand—the boy—showing all the impatience of one of the men of his race. The girl signaled him to remain.

“The Lady bids us be still,” she said. “We must allow him to acknowledge his debt.”

“He owes us nothing,” the boy snapped. “He was dying. We helped him. There is nothing more.”

Anger flared within the faerie’s breast.

How dare the human assume that the fey held their lives so cheaply. No, a debt of honor was what he owed—his life; he would have to repay. He turned so that he faced them both.

The words of his debt rose to his lips and were stilled. There was something he was forgetting, something…

The girl had already sensed it. Her face had grown as white as the snow scattered beneath the trees. The boy gasped. The warrior crumpled. This pain was worse than all the pain that had gone before. If only he had remembered, he struggled to unclench an arm from about his waist and pointed.

Althessa did not need the signal. She could already sense the need, a need hidden by the need of the warrior and the aftermath of the goddess’s touch. She felt it now and it drove her to her knees, so that she was forced to crawl towards it.

Faran sensed the imbalance of magic just beyond the clearing, he sensed the link between its source and the fairy warrior.

“Come with me,” he ordered, seizing the warrior’s hand.

Without thinking, the warrior leant against the young human’s side. His bond-mount lay at death’s door, had lain dying while he’d debated honoring the debt he owed the children.

The creature’s pain rolled over him once more and he realized it had been keeping this pain from him. It had been trying to spare him its agony while he had lain watching the tide of death roll towards him.

The taunts of the other warriors meant nothing to him in the face of his bond-mount’s life—meant nothing if he was to lose the creature, yet survive. He fought against the doubling pain and ran towards it.

*   *   *

Althessa found the creature folded up behind a rock. Its pain was too great for her to bear. She could feel its need thrumming through her and was reaching for the goddess before her hands had touched its hide.

Beresia answered, filling the child with as much healing power as the girl could bear. Even goddess’s can make mistakes.

The magicks that made the creature reached out and wrapped themselves around Althessa’s hands. Althessa cried out in shock, but did not let go. She drew fiercely on Beresia’s power, seeking to blend it with the flaring energy that was the creature incarnate.

She needed Faran. Without knowing it, she called his name. She called upon them all. She called to her goddess, then cried out the names of all the gods she knew.

There were not many. Aravare, Beresia’s husband, the god of balance; Maraloch, Beresia’s daughter, goddess of justice, the unraveler of her sister Berveragna’s webs; Sariel, goddess of magic. Without knowing it Althessa called Sariel’s name twice, only to receive the hollow emptiness of no reply.

For some reason this made her weep, but she retained her sense of purpose and bent to trying to mend the beast before her. Faran came to her in time to see the creature’s flaring magic twist about her arms.

It was as though the beast was made of string or yarn and was unraveling before his eyes. Althessa must be mad!

He felt the faerie stumble at his side, the closeness of his beast’s distress forcing the warrior to his knees. Sighing, Faran unhooked the small man’s hand from his arm and laid him on the ground. Already he could feel the magic sense ringing alarms within him.

Faran made himself stand back from the creature and study it, letting his sense of magic replace his eyes, allowing himself to fall into the unraveling mess that was a living, dying beast.

While Althessa began her healing chant once more, Faran gathered a little of the spilling power to himself. It was bitter, tainted by the poison of an unholy blade, and he longed to drop it, to let it go. He looked down at his sister and saw how the fires had joined themselves across her back. She was deep into the chant now, but he could not place where he had heard it before.

Althessa’s eyes were closed. She could see how to mend the creature’s flesh more clearly without the light of its magic in her eyes. Slowly, she was weaving it back together, patching flesh to flesh and knitting muscle to bone. It was the raging magicks that she could not control.

Faran’s presence beside her was a relief. The gods had told him that magic was his concern, now let the gods gift him with the means to know what to do. Althessa sent Beresia’s gift of power into the beast’s small body and saw another bone bend back together.

Faran was almost silent as he worked beside her. His hands wove patterns in the air and a small tune began to hum from his throat. He had only begun his studies in magic, four days ago when a wizard had joined the villagers in their flight from the king’s wrath. Never had Faran dared draw this much power to himself.

Gradually he separated the tangling strands, smoothing them and weaving them back together. It was no use; the tangles sprang back, worse than before as the magical fibers wove, then rewove themselves into knots, each one more tangled than the last.

Worse than the tangling, was the sudden flaring that occurred, or the reaching, twining strands that seemed to have no attachment to the body that had housed them. At first Faran tried to avoid these fragments of magic, then he allowed them to wind themselves about him in the hope that he could repair them and persuade them back to their proper host.

The twining strands wrapped themselves about him and he felt searing pain at their touch. He would have cried out, but the chant kept tumbling from his lips. He was going to die. Faran sensed this with the part of him that was still alive, and knew he could not escape it. He would have grieved for his sister and the beast they fought to save, but he did not have time. Trying to block the knowledge from his mind, he bent to the task he had set.

No longer did he try to untangle the floating strands. Now he tried to take them and blend them with the flesh and blood of the creature’s mending body. He joined his magic to the healing being worked by Althessa, weaving the threads of the power he had gathered into the power that was being poured through her.

He wondered if the gods despaired as he caught another of the finely webbed magicks that had formed the creature’s essence. Gently, he set it against the meshing muscles of its chest and melded it into them.

The magick flared with resentment. Too much of it had been torn. Its integrity had been breached. A cursed blade wielded by undead hands had cloven through its strands and the poison of its passage remained.

Althessa had finished knitting the creature’s body before she found the black and green tracery of venom in its tissues. She sighed and reached for more power.

“Oh, goddess of poisons and creatures vile,” she whispered, not knowing that the being she called on was as real as the lady she served.

The goddess responded. She plucked at the knowledge in the child’s mind and found it lacking. She felt the overloading magick, and wondered what price she could extract from the child’s soul, or the goddess the child served. Such debts would one day need to be repaid. With an effort, she reached for the poison through Althessa’s fingertips, touched and tasted it, and almost died.

Fear from her close brush with destruction startled her. Never had she had cause to fear a toxin, a venom, or a poison. Never had she nearly died from something that should have stood within her realm. She felt herself trembling, felt her power weaken. She sensed the taint of undeath and corrupted power within the venom’s bonds and called upon the goddess of necromancers.

On the world below her, Althessa struggled to draw the poison from the muscles and flesh she had healed, and Faran sought to clear it from the strands. Neither of them noticed how their own flesh was darkening, nor did they feel how the heat of disassembling magic was rising. It created a light in the forest, one which rose to meet the sun. It enveloped the children, making them little more than silhouettes in a flaring orange haze.

The goddess of poisons completed her conference and turned her attention to the spark of life that was Althessa. Beside her, the goddess of necromancers did the same.

The poison had almost completed its work. The magic that made up the being of the beast was nearly frayed beyond repair. Faran’s efforts made little change to the inevitability of its destruction.

The goddesses did not pause. They would work through both fledgling mage and rising priestess. They joined their power and wove it. They sent the knowledge and the ability to wield their gift. They would extract a price for their services later—if the pair survived.

*   *   *

Rowany raised her head from the weapon in the undead’s outstretched hand. There was magic in the air. She could sense it. She shook herself. Nonsense! There was no way that she could sense the arcane. Her senses were tuned to the use of priestly magic, and that alone.

Nevertheless...

There were footsteps coming through the forest, unconcealed and unconcerned. Rowany looked briefly towards them. The villagers had arrived. Rowany frowned. Hadn’t the laird ordered them to push on toward the river?

The laird thought so too. He was hurrying to meet them, a look like thunder on his face. His expression said that the priest he had set to be their guide had better have a good explanation.

The sense of power drew at Rowany until she could not ignore it. Better she should find out who wielded this much magic so close to them, than they be taken unawares. She stood, dusting dead leaves and polluted snow from her knees.

Voices were raised behind her. Althessa glanced towards them. Faran’s brother, Jomack stood, face-to-face with his laird, as confrontational as she’d ever seen him. The priest who had been tasked with leading the villagers was standing in between, one hand on each man’s chest. Jomack, having spoken, was staring across the clearing of purified dead. He was staring in the direction of the magic Rowany sensed.

Her gaze must have alerted him, for he looked briefly in her direction. Their eyes met.

“You feel it too,” he said, coming towards her.

“You feel it too!” he repeated, his voice rising.

It was true; she could feel it, and it was not arcane alone. Mingled within the maelstrom of power was the gifting of the gods.

Surely, she thought, surely no human can withstand such power, let alone wield it with success.

Her thoughts turned abruptly to her apprentice. She looked around the clearing.

“Althessa?” she called. “Althessa?”

There was no reply. Jomack followed her gaze.

“Faran’s missing as well,” he said.

They spoke no more, but turned as one towards the forest and the rising crescendo of magic. Behind them someone called their names. They did not hear, focusing all their senses on the maelstrom ahead. Without waiting for more, they began to run, passing through the guardian bushes and a thicket of trees, neither of them noticing, or needing to see, the faint trail the children had left. They passed the place the children had saved the wounded fairy without registering it with their eyes.

The light from beyond the clearing blinded them. Jomack would have rushed into it if Rowany hadn’t laid a hand on his arm.

“It will do them no good if you perish now,” she said, and he came to an unwilling halt.

Slowly, they approached the glare and noticed a lesser glare beside it. The fairy had found the strength to fight for his beast.

He stood to one side of the rising ball of magic and tried to contain it. The strands of his power were a cool, green web against the orange fire before him. He did not look at them as they approached, but addressed them, just the same.

“Do not come closer,” he ordered with the confidence of one used to command. “The gods do as much as they can.”

Rowany sent a prayer to Beresia and realized that her goddess had been present all along. She reached for the calming power the goddess sent, and shaped it to match the web the fairy wielded.

Jomack stood with his hands at his side. There was nothing he could do. His younger brother was barely visible within the sphere of arcane light, and there was nothing he could do! He took a step toward the fire. There was a muttered oath from behind him and heavy steps joined the sound of Rowany’s chant. Strong arms wrapped themselves around him and threw him to the ground.

“Let me up!” he roared. “That’s my brother in there and my sister! I have to save them. In the name of the gods let me up.”

“It can’t be done,” the man above him grunted as Jomack struggled to stand.

“When this is done…” Jomack began, rolling to one side.

Someone else hit him, grabbing his arm and dragging him away from the magic.

“Don’t make threats you’ll regret later,” a new voice ordered.

“It’s Althessa! And Faran!” Joram cried, startled to hear his voice cracking into sobs, “Damn you. It’s Althessa and Faran.”

The weight on his back was unrelenting. The hands that had drawn his arms behind him did not let go.

“Let the gods do what they will,” the newer voice said. “This is not for the likes of us.”

Jomack raised his head and looked towards the barely visible forms behind their curtain of power. There was nothing he could do. He listened, becoming aware of other voices, of his mother trying to soothe his other sister’s tears, of the hiss of steel clearing a scabbard. Neia’s voice cracked sharply in an oath that brought silence to the sudden surge of footsteps at the clearing’s edge.

“Be still! All of you!” she ordered. “This is work for magicians and priests, or would you all perish attempting at a rescue you cannot hope to achieve.”

There was a murmur of assent at this, but she snapped at them.

“Well I, for one, will not jeopardize the children’s lives by meddling with something the gods have in their hands, nor will I allow you to risk their lives so you can all be dead heroes.”

Jomack heard someone move forwards, and sensed his sister’s abrupt turn to face them. He relaxed when he heard Taloc’s voice answer her.

“I’ll stand with you,” her fiancé told her, then raised his voice to address the others. “No one will interfere in the work of gods and mages.”

Jomack heard the priestess gasp. One of the men on his back groaned. He turned his attention to the children wrapped in magical fire.

One of them had dropped one of the strands they had been holding. The strand had coiled back like a snake and struck at them. One of the voices within the maelstrom faltered and the sphere about them flared more brightly.

The drama took all their attention, and no one noticed the sound of a myriad wings descend about them. Suddenly two score of green nets wrapped themselves about the sphere.

Jomack tore his eyes from the children within it and looked up. He felt the hands on his wrists grow slack, but did nothing except close his mouth.

They were surrounded by faeries; an entire tribe of them. The small folk seemed not to notice them. Each faerie was concentrating on the sphere, trying to cool the rampaging power that flared within it. Each tiny creature was ignoring the humans, risking itself to tame the magical fury before them.

Very slowly, Jomack turned his head back to his siblings. The sphere about them was losing some of its orange hue. It was fading, becoming a crisp, yellow-gold. Jomack began to relax. Whatever the faeries were doing, it was working.

Within the sphere Faran and Althessa were having more success with their weaving. Wild strands of magic were submitting to their chants, allowing themselves to be drawn back into the creature they had formed before.

Jomack allowed his cheek to touch the ground. He watched as the green nets glowed against the golden sphere. He saw what happened when one of the children fumbled the words of their chant.

A dozen strands tore loose from the creature they were trying to save and spun into the air about Althessa’s head. There was an oath of startlement, followed by Neia’s sharp cry of annoyance and a ground-shaking thump.

The hands on Jomack’s wrists tightened as he struggled to reach his sister.

“Don’t even think of it,” came a warning rumble from above him.

Jomack thought he heard tears in the voice, but he stilled, only raising his head to watch the children in the sphere. The magic roared, like a fire that had a pine branch added. The faerie webs split and snapped, recoiling about their casters in vengeful fury.

There was a collective cry of startlement from the little folk, followed by the sound of humming wings. The fey settled to the ground to wait. Some were tending comrades that had fallen from the recoiling of the nets. All of them were weeping.

“By the gods, Faran, let it go,” Jomack whispered, as he watched his brother collect another of the strands and begin to meld it with the magic Althessa was casting.

“Althessa,” he groaned moments later when he saw the magic that entwined her biting into her arms and splitting the material of her robe across her back.

He groaned again when his sister gasped in the middle of a chant. The magic around her burst into the spikes of vengeful flame, and her robe began to burn.

Jomack renewed his struggle and, catching his captors by surprise, managed to free one of his arms. It was short-lived. Someone stood on it and someone else pushed his face into the forest floor.

He forced himself to relax. Even if he couldn’t help, he still wanted to be able to see. The hand on his head relented and he raised his head.

“Enough!”

The new voice made him drag his eyes from the burning fires. He sensed the men above him tense.

“Enough,” the voice repeated, and it was a voice he did not know.

Jomack turned his eyes towards it, and saw an old man carrying a greenwood staff.

Before anyone could stop him, the old man stepped into the magical sphere. Energy roared around him, engulfing him beyond the sight of eyes. Joram found his sight blurred by tears of pain. Several villagers cried out in surprise.

The brightness did not lessen, rather it intensified until no one was sure what they were seeing. They only knew that the burning flames across Althessa’s back were drawn to the column of power the old man had become and were absorbed by it.

There was silence for a long moment, then the power reached towards the children once more. Joram tensed, relaxing only when the power passed into their hands and let them weave it into, and around, the creature on the ground before them.

It was like watching his mother spin. The column drew the sphere’s strands into itself, rewove them and sent them back to Althessa and Faran to knit back into the creature.

The beast on the ground grew. It began to glow. Slowly it roused itself and stood, somewhat unsteadily, on four feet. Wings sprouted from its shoulders—giant, feathery things that seemed blown by an invisible breeze. Faran unwrapped the magic wound around himself, and passed it into the column before taking it back and blending into airy feathers. Once the last of the rampant magic was soothed into finding a home, the column unraveled itself.

The sun was fading by the time the last of the column’s power had been dispersed, and they were once more looking at an old man with a greenwood staff.

The beast on the ground stepped towards Althessa and Faran, placing its great head against their foreheads. It rested there for a long moment before stepping past them to the warrior that stood beyond them.

It came to his chest, if you did not include the wings. He knelt before it and spoke in a tongue none of them understood. There were tears in his eyes as it placed its face against his in reply, and then silence.

When they drew apart it was to face the man with the staff. Fey and beast approached with footsteps still weak from what had gone before. The man waited. When they reached him, they both bowed.

“Our debt is great.”

“You will pay it in time.”

They paused, looking at each other in solemn understanding. Words, it seemed, would have been inadequate for what passed between them. Silence held the clearing. The warrior and his beast stood and stared at the old man. The old man kept their gaze, trapped within his own.

Faran and Althessa sat, still too stunned by what had transpired to move, their skin glowing gently from the aftermath of magic.

The villagers, Jomack and the laird found it impossible to move, or speak, the enormity of what had passed suddenly falling on their minds like thunder.

The fey were too busy tending their wounded and waiting for the old man to say something, to do anything but cast apprehensive glances towards the human-folk that had come into their lands.

When the silence was broken it was by the whirr of small wings and a frantic cry in faerie tongue. Tension came with him. Even the faerie wounded struggled to rise, their small hands reaching for weapons, their faces sudden masks of anger and destruction.

The old man’s voice stilled them, his words leaving no other option than obedience.

“Follow me,” he said. “The forest will fend for itself.”

“Trust me,” he continued when the fey folk hesitated. “I have called and the forest has answered. The forest will be safe today and hereafter. There are forces greater than any of us to protect it. The king’s men will find little to please them here.”

Again the faeries hesitated. This time they looked to their queen. She rose from beside one of her warriors and drifted on silent wings towards the druid.

The messenger’s wings beat the air in agitation, but his voice remained silent as he waited for his queen to speak.

She chose the common tongue and her words were clear in the winter afternoon.

“We will do as you say Protector of the Forest. We will follow you and listen to your advice.”

The protector nodded.

“It shall be as you have commanded, your Highness. Follow me.”

The fey moved, sheathing their weapons and summoning strange creatures to their side. The villagers looked in confusion to their lord.

The protector stepped towards the children and took them each by a hand.

“Come with me,” he said. “I will keep you safe.”

“We have a new guide.”

The laird’s voice was calm but the order in its tone was unmistakable. He released Jomack’s wrists and stood.

“Follow the Forest’s Protector,” he said, ushering his people before him. His guard hung back beside him. They were the last to move through the winter trees.

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Magick on the Forest's Edge is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/mvK7O6.

You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?