Douglas Niles - Prophet of Moonshae

"Tell me," he said, after a brief pause, "why was it so important to you that we remain out here tonight?"

"I don't kno-yes, I do. It was this water, the Moonwell. I looked upon it and I didn't want to leave."

"You've seen Moonwells before. Isn't the one in the moors beyond Callidyrr a favorite picnic spot of yours? Have you ever felt such a thing before?"

"Never." Alicia was certain of the answer. The compulsion that had drawn her here was unique in her experience. She sensed that Keane looked at her strangely. "Do I puzzle you, O wise tutor?" she asked, laughing softly. "Well, I puzzle myself as well!"

"Indeed, Princess." The man's voice was strangely hesitant, in a way she had never noticed before.

With a shocking realization, Alicia felt an abrupt awareness of Keane as a man, here beside her in this place of serenity. She liked that feeling but was vaguely frightened by it as well. Disturbed, she lowered her eyes, afraid of what he might see there even in the dark.

And yet the emotion she felt most strongly was a small inkling of delight, of a sweet discovery that came unexpectedly into her life. He did not seem so old now. Indeed, of what real significance were the eight years between them?

At the same time, Alicia realized that she genuinely cared for this man more than any other person outside her family. She trusted him, and his presence made her happy.

Did he think the same thoughts?

Keane stiffened suddenly. "What's that?"

Alicia, her mind wandering, looked at the tutor in annoyance. "What do you mean? What's what?"

Offending her still further, he placed a hand to her mouth to gently silence her. She knocked his arm aside, ready to object, when she heard the noise, too.

"It's coming closer," Keane whispered.

They heard a heavy clank, like a knight in plate mail walking across the rocky ground. Yet the noise was too deep, too resonant to come from plate mail. It was a metal thing that must have been much larger. Like the crash of a great gong, the sound rang through the darkness with vibrancy and power.

"There!" Keane sprang to his feet, staring into the darkness.

Alicia gasped, for she saw something moving along the shore on the other side of the pool. The faint glow cast the object in a soft shade of green, and she saw that it was huge-and it moved, though with an artificial kind of gait, like a poorly controlled puppet.

"A giant!" she gasped.

"Illuminatus mio!" barked the tutor. He raised a hand, gesturing to the ground before the looming figure's feet.

A cool wash of brilliance erupted, as if the rocks themselves became crystal lanterns housing wicks of bright, steady flame. The shore, the camp, the well, even the walls of the small valley, stood sharply etched in light. In the midst of it all, the two humans could only stare in shock at the apparition that towered some fifteen feet into the air.

"It's not a giant!" Keane gasped, appalled. "It's metal-a thing made by man!"

Alicia couldn't comprehend a power that could make and animate something so supremely horrifying. The object had the vague outlines of a man, walking upon two legs, with a pair of massive arms swinging at its sides. Atop its metal shoulders rested a round head, with bolted plates forming the grotesque caricature of a mouth and eyes.

A great horned helm capped its iron visage, a helm such as Alicia had seen on some of the northmen warriors who came regularly to Callidyrr. The monstrous thing looked like a giant clad in head-to-foot plate mail, though it moved with a jerking, mechanical efficiency that resembled no living thing.

A huge leg stretched forward, kicking one of the cedars into splinters. The other swung, knocking a boulder out of the way, shattering another rock from the weight of its monstrous step. Huge strides carried the clanking object around the shore of the pond straight toward them.

Desperately Alicia looked toward Keane. He gazed at the monstrosity in stupefied horror, his mouth open. The woman felt for her sword. She had left it beside the saddle up at the camp. She almost laughed aloud at the picture in her mind-her small form bashing the steel blade against this unfeeling colossus until the edge was dented and dull. Suddenly giddy, the princess knew that it was fear that consumed her, threatening to overcome her capacity for reason. The giant loomed overhead, sightless eyes staring past her. She saw the gaping slash of its mouth, the dull red of some internal heat reflecting there.

Alicia felt Keane's hand on her arm. The man had recovered his wits, and now he pulled her from the rock where they had been sitting. The princess stumbled and felt his fingers digging into her flesh, lifting her and pulling her. "Ouch!" she shouted, suddenly furious with him. Moments later, a nearby rock exploded, crushed to gravel by the thing's powerful kick. Stinging shards bit into Alicia's back.

"Run! By the goddess, run!" Keane gasped, propelling her forward, placing himself protectively behind her.

Run she did, blindly scrambling away from the horror. She stumbled and cracked her knee against a rock, she twisted an ankle when she fell a second time, but still she desperately fled, racing away from the well toward the place where they had spread their bedrolls.

For a moment, she remembered Tavish, still sleeping there. The crunching footsteps pursued, slowly but inevitably. She couldn't lead the thing to the bard!

"Tavish!" she shouted, darting to the side, following along the shore of the Moonwell. "Be silent, but flee!"

Alicia spun, seeking Keane against the silhouetting effects of the magical illumination. Surely he could do something!

Her heart churned in deep panic. She couldn't see Keane anywhere in the small, bowl-shaped vale.

"Precantos-nimbus. Tu-arlist!"

There! Suddenly she saw his tall figure, standing like a tree some distance away, shouting strange sounds. Alicia realized, with sharp guilt, that Keane had turned to face the colossal attacker at the same time as she had veered away from the camp, and she hadn't noticed until now that he did not follow her!

The illumination of the light spell still flared, casting its glare across the sloping ground between the iron creature and Keane, uphill slightly from the colossus. The earth there, as everywhere in this little vale, was a mass of jutting boulders and cracked stone.

Keane's magic struck the stones, not with the sudden violence of explosive force but with the slow power of fundamental transformation. The solid nature of the boulders was seized by magic, distorted and adjusted into something much softer, even liquid.

Alicia stared, amazed, as she saw the rocks begin to change shape, oozing flat as if they were soft, doughy mounds, flowing like thick sludge. The rocks melted away, running downhill as thick, brown goop, viscous and soupy. In moments, the area between Keane and the iron beast had become a gooey morass. The tutor's presence taunted the monster, drawing it deeper into the mud.

The sticky stuff flowed around the iron beast's legs, and Alicia saw the gigantic form sink slowly to its waist. It struggled forward, flailing with its powerful arms, splashing gouts of mud with fists that were greater than monstrous hammers. All around them, the rockfield seethed and bubbled, a quagmire. The mud sucked greedily, smacking around the torso and then the shoulders of the animated metal thing.

Finally Alicia saw only its horrible head, capped with the wide, horned helm, and the upward-reaching arms. Then, despite the beast's frantic grasping and thrashing, even these disappeared. Only a thick, bubbling swirl in the sticky surface remained to mark the place where the golem had disappeared.

"Keane!" the princess shouted, stunned and disbelieving. She sobbed and laughed at the same time. "How did you-?"