Clayton Emery: Whispering woods

"You forget the bodyguards!" Kem cut in. "They're better fighters than you are! I hired 'em!"

"Kem, if you can't help, belt up!" Gull hefted his axe. "We'll see what's what, flee if we must-"

Stiggur's cold hand grabbed Gull's arm. "Look!"

Atop the black, rain-slick monolith, Towser perched like a peacock.

Kneeling on the rounded top, the wizard clung with one hand. Gull could have pitched his axe and hit him.

With that thought, a score of elven black arrows whizzed through the night. Every one hit the wizard dead center-before bouncing off and disappearing into the dark eventide.

Damn that infernal magic shield! thought Gull. Damn all magic! The bastard wasn't even wet!

A white stripe flickered in Towser's hand. A silver wand aimed down at them.

Gull's body spasmed from head onto toe. His bad knee shot out and he crashed on the turf, almost braining Greensleeves with his axe. But she'd pitched backward into briars that held her like a prickly bed. Kem was down, crawling as if from bellyache, as did Morven. Stiggur lay on his side and twitched like a dog with nightmares.

Gull fought the jerky paralysis, but couldn't even clench his teeth without biting his tongue. His fingers hooked into claws, his arms shook, one leg kicked on its own.

The disrupting scepter, Gull agonized, that made a man's body betray him. But why hadn't Towser simply drained their energy? For Gull knew, somehow, it had been Towser who'd flown and stolen the life forces from his village. Yet Towser wanted Greensleeves's magic. Perhaps draining her would waste it? He didn't know-didn't know anything about magic, and cursed himself for his ignorance.

And his helplessness. For this was the snap of the trap. They lay exposed as baby mice in a spilled nest. Growing more vulnerable by the minute. The raging of Liko and the rock hydra had diminished, so one must have lost, and last time the victor had been the hydra. The flaming nightmare had vanished from the roiling sky. From the corner of his eye, Gull saw the elven captain crawl away, dragging her bow. Magic must affect them less, but still they were running.

Gull would have too, but it was too late. He tried to grab his axe, to sit up, but only flailed himself in the face and fell back. Towser could walk over unarmed, seize Gull's sister, stretch her on the altar…

A whispering came to him. Greensleeves's voice, cooing as when she'd been simple. Maybe terror and exhaustion had twisted her mind to its earlier state. In the dimness he saw her white face staring upward, rain speckling her cheeks, blipping her eyes. Her small rough hands pressed flat against the earth as she whispered. Or chanted.

Then, deep under Gull's back, the earth groaned.

With his head against the wet grass, Gull's teeth rattled with the force of the earthquake. His vision danced until he thought his eyeballs would pop. Shock waves made his spine jiggle until he felt he'd break into pieces.

A roaring sounded as the earth shuddered, a strange grumbling and rushing as the dirt and rock of the bluff tore apart. Clickings and clackings and pingings told him rocks flaked from the cliff and bounced onto sea rocks below. Overhead, briars shivered and danced, flinging water droplets he could taste. The roaring increased until it filled his ears, his brain.

Then the black basalt monolith began to dance.

Towser found his perch swaying. Alarmed, he snatched at his grimoire. For his flying spell, Gull knew.

With a sliding grinding rush, a slab of the monolith split from the top, smashed dirt and rocks from the bluff's edge, and cascaded into the sea with a boom. The missing piece almost took Towser with it, but he launched into the air, flapping his arms, ungainly as a chicken.

A thought burned in Gull's brain. My little sister did this? She'd lived through one earthquake, back in White Ridge. But to conjure one…? How much power did she wield?

The woodcutter heaved a shoulder, tried to clutch his axe, touched the haft with clumsy fingers. His whole body shook: he couldn't tell which juttered more, him or the earth. Gritting his teeth, he flipped over. The spasming spell must be wearing off.

Not soon enough.

Slowly, slowly, the huge monolith teetered toward the ocean, the unbalanced side, tilted farther -then the entire bluff collapsed under the shifting weight.

The sound of sliding, smashing, crashing stone striking the foamy, rocky shore was horrendous, ear-shattering. Aftershocks rippled up and down the beach and shorn bluff, spraying soil and grass like a snapped blanket. The ponderous clockwork beast, so heavy it sank into loam, went cartwheeling out to sea like a toy.

Through his hips and breastbone, Gull felt the earth slip farther. The earthquake and toppling monolith were too much. Before his eyes, a chasm split the bluff. The broken edge jumped at him in big bites, as if swallowed by an invisible monster. Grass and dirt disappeared at a hand's reach.

Halfway erect, Kem spit a bitter oath. Morven prayed. Stiggur went white with terror. Greensleeves just looked wide-eyed and amazed at the destruction she'd wrought.

Then, suddenly, as if they sat on a flying carpet, the earth dropped away, and they dropped, screaming.

Gull was unsure how far he fell, or how he survived the fall. He could only suppose their portion of bluff slid whole before bursting apart.

One second he sailed through space on the earthern carpet, actually lifting from the wet grass, the next he plunged below icy salt waves, deep, deep, deep.

Blasts of icy water and panicked thoughts almost overwhelmed the woodcutter, buried in the sea. He had to retain his axe, his only weapon. He had to find Greensleeves. He had to get air.

The axe went immediately, his hand letting go on its own. He clutched water, clawing for the surface, unsure if he rose or sank. His lungs burned, ready to rupture, but then his head broke water. He gasped fresh salt air-and was buried anew in dirty churning waves. Down he went, but by kicking and clawing, found the surface again, was almost sucked under by another wave. The sea had been rough enough with the storm, but tons of plunging cliffside had set the ocean itself heaving.

Another wave batted his face, then his bare feet- his clogs were long gone-bashed against something first soft, then unyielding.

Wildly, the woodcutter grabbed for it. A seaweed-festooned rock. Slime disintegrated in his hands, then another wave mashed him against the rock. Climbing, spluttering, retching water, he got a foot wedged into a cleft-slicing skin on hidden barnacles-and hung on. Wracked, exhausted, he almost toppled into the next wave, but he hurled himself back up, wrapped around the rock.

But where was Greensleeves? He couldn't have protected her, come this far, only to lose her to drowning. And what of the others?

An explosive retching rang nearby. In the dim light, he saw Morven's gray head hang as he vomited water. Half-under him was Stiggur, like a drowned muskrat. That left "Gull, you bastard! Help me!"

Not far off, on a flatter expanse of seaweed, Kem struggled to land himself while towing Greensleeves by her hair. The girl waved her hands, protesting at the pain but, like a machine, the bodyguard hauled her higher up the slippery rock. Kem had lost his helmet, sword, one boot.

Tripping, sliding on sliced feet, Gull reached them, grabbed his sister around the shoulders.

Kem coughed hard enough to split a lung, but couldn't resist a snipe. "Don't-thank me."

Gull hugged his weeping sister. "Thank you, Kem. Thank you."

The ex-bodyguard snorted water out his nose, coughed anew.

Morven and Stiggur collapsed beside them. The boy sobbed, "I've had enough adventuring."

"Me, too, lad," gasped the sailor. "Thirty years afloat, and I come nearest drowning working for a wagon train. Neptune's after my soul-Oh, no…"