Jean Lorrah - Wulfston's odyssey

So he picked up his soggy clothes and trudged down the beach, keeping as far as he could manage from the edge of the threatening forest.

Before he had gone half a mile, his feet were cut and bleeding from sharp shell fragments buried in the sand. He cursed himself for kicking his boots off in the sea-but they had filled with water and weighed him down. Rather than risk infection, he used healing power to close the cuts, and continued on his way.

Up ahead, he saw a shape at the edge of the water-a survivor! He broke into a run, but the man didn’t stir. When Wulfston touched him, he knew at once that he was dead; the body was cold and stiff, already starting to bloat.

Wulfston turned the man over, and recognized one of the Night Queen sailors, one rigid hand gripping a piece of railing. Should he use the strength needed to create a funeral pyre-white heat to return the body properly to the elements? The man’s clothes were so wet-

And, sturdy workman’s garments, they were in much better condition than Wulfston’s.

He was uneasy at the thought of robbing the dead, yet this man had no further use for that heavy seaman’s shirt and those thick-soled shoes that might well have been what pulled him under and drowned him.

I will give him a proper funeral pyre in exchange for what he can no longer use , Wulfston decided, and bent to the task of stripping the rigid corpse.

But the moment he began to move the body, a shout rang out from the edge of the forest.

Wulfston looked up.

A dozen men ran toward him, armed with knives, spears, and clubs.

Like Wulfston, they were naked except for a covering about their loins, but they wore chains of what appeared to be bones about their necks.

Other than that, they wore only headbands, all alike, each with the same symbol in bright beadwork.

They charged down the beach, then paused to throw their spears-and Wulfston saw a weapon new to him.

What had appeared to be a spear was actually made of two pieces. When a man flung one, he kept the heavier lower end in his hand, while something like a long, heavy arrow shot forth with the strength of his swing and whizzed toward Wulfston!

He used his powers to deflect the arrows, but his attackers kept coming.

He sent a sheet of flame leaping before the startled band, but the moment it disappeared they charged toward him. As they spread out in a semicircle, Wulfston knew he had made a mistake in giving his Adept powers away. They knew how to take an Adept: divide his attention and make him use up his strength.

If his powers had been at full strength, he might have withstood them. But at twelve to one, given his current condition, he had no choice but to run.

He darted to the right, angling up the sand, abandoning his bundle of clothes beside the drowned sailor.

Using Adept power to strengthen his tired legs, he plunged through the dry sand at the top of the beach, deflecting the spear-arrows that pursued him.

One of the men was fast enough to catch him. He felt a hand on his arm, turned, and saw the upraised club. He stopped the man’s heart. His attacker fell, pulling Wulfston down with him in his death spasm.

Wulfston peeled the dead man’s fingers away and sprinted for the forest, Adeptly forcing his lungs to take in air, his limbs to move in rhythm.

He plunged into a different world!

This forest was like none he had ever known. It was jungle, as thick with undergrowth as with trees. He staggered and slid on rotted vegetation, blinded by the difference between the hot yellow beach and this dark greenness where the sun could hardly penetrate. Birds screamed at his noisy passage, and small animals fled through the trees.

The air was cool and moist, a relief to his aching lungs, but the smell was frighteningly different from any he had ever known.

To avoid his pursuers, he zigzagged through the trees. The jungle would not let him choose his own path, but made him go where it provided openings. Over and over he found his way blocked by roots, rocks, thickets.

He ran until he could run no further. Exhausted, he leaned against the sloping trunk of a huge tree, gasping for breath. The jungle had fallen silent.

Through the roaring in his ears, he listened for pursuit. There was nothing. As his breathing calmed, he realized that it was too silent around him. The jungle was watching this intruder like a cat, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

He was lost.

Sunlight filtered through dappled green shade, diffused so that he could not tell what direction it came from, nor could he hear the pounding of the surf. He didn’t know how to get back to the beach-and if he could, would those warriors be waiting for him?

He needed rest, but first he needed food. In the woods near where he had grown up, he would have been able to put together a meal in minutes; here he could see berries, fungus, some yellow fruit on a nearby tree… but which of it was safe, and which poisonous?

Besides, he needed meat to restore his strength. And he was desperately thirsty.

His heart stopped pounding in his ears, and his breathing returned to a rapid but normal pace. Through the silence he heard a soft rushing; it had to be water.

Pushing himself away from the support of the tree, he moved toward the sound, pausing often to listen, following as the sound became slowly louder until he came out at a pool into which a small cascade fell from a rocky but overgrown hillside.

With no thought except slaking his thirst, Wulfston rushed to the pool, sinking calf-deep into mud among the rushes that lined it, and on into the water itself.

It was cold and clear. He sank into it, drank it in, let it wash away salt and sand and sweat.

But it was too cold to stay in. He swam to the rock wall and pulled himself out onto a secure perch, where he sat and watched for fish to return to feeding now that the disturbance was gone. He knew that it was safe to eat any scaly fish, and he hoped that he still had enough strength to kill a fish and make a fire to cook it.

A wave of hunger swept through him as he thought about grilling fish. His mouth watered.

But the fish stayed out of sight.

He would have to call them, his desperate need for food outweighing his reluctance to lure a creature only to kill it.

This ability to influence animals had been the first Adept power Wulfston had manifested, when he was three years old. He had used it for amusement then, calling rabbits and squirrels to play with him, to the delight of the other village children. Over the years he had used it to calm frightened horses, or wounded animals so he could heal them.

Now, though, he had no choice but to use it to feed himself. He felt more naked without the full strength of his powers than without his clothes.

He began to picture the pool from beneath the water, where he had been a few minutes before. He thought of a big, fat fish wanting to go up toward the surface, where there was food.

Sure enough, just such a fish swam lazily to the dappled surface of the pool. Wulfston began to lure it closer, giving it the desire to come within his grasp. When it was just below the rock on which he perched, he stopped its heart quickly, painlessly, and reached down-

Wulfston got a fleeting impression of something with teeth enough for an army as the fish was snatched away!

He started back, fear tingling through his nerves and emerging from his skin in cold sweat.

There was a monster in the pool!

He stared as the thing resurfaced, a lizardlike animal as large as a man, with a back like a log, a tapering tail that moved lazily to rudder it through the water, and a head that was ugliness personified. Eyes atop the head stared coldly at him, defying him to dare try again for its prey, but it was the creature’s snout that held his gaze. His impression of endless teeth was verified-there were so many that the mouth could not contain them all, and they snaggled in sharp array around the outside of the vicious maw.