Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Twenty-Five

“What are you doing?” Lint asked.

The sorcerer replied through clenched teeth: “We’re leaving. I’m not spending the night next to a corpse. And with these clouds that troll hunting party with their bargs will be on us soon.”

Just as he’d fallen asleep, the sorcerer had been woken by a night visitor—the self-styled Raven Prince. A former acquaintance and fellow sorcerer, the Raven Prince had insisted on swapping stories and sharing food over the fire. What had begun as a nuisance had swiftly become a nightmare. The Prince was a sociopath with a savage hatred for mythics; as soon as he’d spotted Lint the Prince had indulged in earthcrafting to kill the leprechaun. As the mythic was his personal property, the sorcerer had in turn responded, summoning a fire elemental.

The battle lasted five minutes.

His glasses were askew from the battle. The sorcerer, adjusting them, moved to leave, and found his little assistant crouching in a mulberry bush. He thought the little bugger might be crying. “All right, enough with the whimpering, the man is dead.”

“Golden throne!” Lint cursed. “Can’t a poor Danaan drop one without him being spied on?”

“Right, sorry.”

Once Lint had finished, he yanked his trousers up and raced to catch the sorcerer. As he buttoned his suspenders he muttered, “That ruddy Prince. I never heard such gommy bunkum as that gormy Prince spewed. Acting the maggot and he wants to kill me? Ain’t a single one of us who asked to come to this world, you know.”

“Next time we run into someone, or enter a village, keep out of sight,” the sorcerer said.

They traveled about a quarter mile, pausing every time a sound like bargs howling passed on a current of wind. It was unlikely the bargs had tracked them; trekking was the only sure method to get them off your tail. Still, once a barg caught a scent, it wouldn’t stop hunting. The sorcerer couldn’t be sure if they’d caught his scent back at the house in Tahawus.

“Alright,” he said, “I’m dead on my feet. Let’s crash here.”

Despite his misgivings, the sorcerer did manage four or five hours of sleep. The sun was still on the other side when he woke, but at least he felt energized. Lint was turning something on a spit over the fire, and it didn’t smell like chicken. His stomach growled in hunger anyway.

“What is that?”

“Gnome,” Lint declared. “I caught it snooping last night. Want some?”

The sorcerer ate some more bethel nuts, stuffed his boots with mugwort to prevent aches, and meditated until the sun came up. Strange sounds from down in the village of Keeseville reached their camp atop an abandoned logging mill. “Kuros karos,” the sorcerer muttered the mantram, eyes closed, razor sharp focus dedicated on a squirrel overhead. Vision narrowed. The sorcerer’s Sight abruptly whisked upwards with sickening vertigo.

He opened his beady eyes and looked down below at his motionless body. Borrowing could be a useful skill, but it left your body defenseless. Best to scan quickly.

The squirrel dropped his nut, leapt deftly over to the trunk and scurried down. Down the old foot path, once beaten by daily logging workers, now covered in a thick carpet of grass and weeds, the squirrel sped. Vision bumped along at a dizzying pace. Soon enough the squirrel emerged into a clearing. It walked forward slowly. There was no ward protecting the village. A bad sign, that. Continuing on, the squirrel strolled up to the border—and saw the cause of the strange sounds.

The sorcerer recalled his Sight.

“Come, Lint, we’re leaving.”

The leprechaun looked longingly at his breakfast of roasted gnome. “But—”

“Now!”

They shambled down the slope and ambled across Pratt Truss Bridge. As they crossed the Ausable River, the sorcerer recalled reading about a magical duel that had taken place here years ago. His reminiscences were interrupted by long shrill screams, reaching them from the other side of the village.

“What in the name of—” Lint’s curse was garbled, by his chewing (apparently he’d snapped off a juicy gnome leg before leaving the meal behind).

The sorcerer said, “A troll horde has attacked Keeseville. Come on, they’ve got bargs. I don’t know if this is the same group that’s been hunting us, but—” he picked up the pace, and Lint hobbled along behind, tossing the half-consumed gnome leg aside into the river where it made a soft plunking sound.

By the time they reached the other end of the bridge, a soldier troll with a pair of ravenous bargs was on the other end. The huge mythic, able to go out during the day thanks to the overcast clouds, released his beasts.

“Oh gobshite!” Lint exclaimed, and bustled ahead.

On dry ground at the edge of the bridge, the sorcerer handed the mirror over to Lint and told him to run, and then communed with the water elemental. In his drained state this quickly proved a difficult task. It didn’t help that he was attempting to overcome a river; bodies of water, pools, ponds, and the like, were easy to subjugate to his Will. But rivers flowed. On some primal level they possessed a moving, flowing Will of their own, even if it was laughably primitive and simple.

Still, the sorcerer had never met anything or anyone he couldn’t overcome with his indomitable drive and sense of purpose. (The Old One being the sole exception.)

Eyes closed, senses razor sharp, he drove his Will into the Ausable River—and conquered it.

With the bargs already halfway across the bridge, powerful legs propelling them fast as thought, half a dozen geysers of river water shot twenty feet into the air. Instead of trickling down harmlessly, they assumed the shape of enormous watery arms and changed direction, following the gestures of the sorcerer’s own arms. They blasted in around the bridge supports and pummeled the bargs with thousands of gallons of water with the concentrated pressure of fire-hoses.

The bargs didn’t even have time to yelp before they vanished between the high-pressure geysers. Water sloughed down off the bridge.

With an especially ugly sneer, the troll charged across the span.

The sorcerer managed to turn the lingering water into a mini eddy which tripped the troll up. He was preparing to drown the mythic, when it got to its feet, turned tail, and ran. Trolls lived for the hunt, and they never backed down from anything.

“It’s going for help,” the sorcerer grumbled.

Cloud-shadow passed over him, and a shiver rippled through his body. It was an early morning September in the Adirondacks, and he was outside his element. On either side of the path two large pines creaked. Every last needle had turned brown and fallen, leaving piles like mini haystacks on the ground, and the bark had peeled off in places. They were dead, sucked dry of all life by his sorcery. With a wave of his hands he summoned a sylph. The wind brought them down, making an effective barrier at the end of the bridge.

He found Lint some fifty yards up the path, looking into the mirror while struggling to fix his long tangled strands of green hair. Without stopping, the sorcerer rewrapped the canvas around the mirror, hoisted the whole package, and kept on going. Inevitably, Lint followed.

“Are we being chased again, spellslinger?”

“Yes.”

Lint spat. “Figures.”