Terry Brooks - The Gypsy Morph

“You and me. The baby.” He put his arm around her and pulled her against him. “About how lucky we are.”

She took his hand and put it on her belly, where the first faint swelling had begun. “It won’t be long. I think it will be a boy.”

He started to say something in reply, but his voice caught in his throat. “I have something to do,” he said finally. “Back up in the pass.”

“Right now?”

“It would be better.”

“But it’s almost dark.”

“That won’t matter.”

She looked at him carefully. “Wait until morning. Please?”

He hesitated. “All right,” he agreed.

He waited until it was fully dark and she was asleep, then he rose from their bed and slipped from their shelter. He walked steadily from there, not looking back, trying not to think of what he was leaving. The air was cool and still, and the sky was filled with stars. The way was brightly lit, the path easy to follow. He took time to recall memories of his days with the Ghosts, of their life in the city and then on the road, of each of them in turn, calling up their faces and holding them before him in his mind like pictures from a camera. He wished he could have said good–bye to them, could have told them how much they meant to him, could have tried to convey what he was feeling.

But that would have been so difficult. There was no easy way to say what needed saying. He would have to trust that they would be able to imagine the words he would have said simply by knowing him.

“THERE IS NO NEED TO BE FRIGHTENED, Hawk,” the King of the Silver River says, smiling. “Your magic will protect you. There will be no pain. There will only be peace.”

“What am I to do?”

“You are to go to the head of the pass that brought you into the valley. You will know what to do when you get there.”

He already knows, although he doesn’t say so. He thinks, again, that perhaps he has always known. He has brought his followers to this place of safety, brought them through the wilderness and out of the path of the destruction that is coming. Only one thing remains in order for them to be made secure. Only he can provide it.

“It is because of who you are,” says the old man. “A gypsy morph, a creature of wild magic, a giver of special gifts. To those you lead, you give the gift of life.”

THINKING OF IT NOW, he hoped that it was true. He needed to believe that it was why he was making this journey. He needed to feel that it mattered in the way he wanted it to.

As he climbed into the mountains from the valley floor, he paused to look back. The starlight was bright enough that he could see to the far horizons. Bits and pieces of the valley floor were visible, as well.

From the camp he had departed, a few lights glowed in the darkness. Not everyone was sleeping. He experienced a sudden urge to turn back, to return to what he so badly wanted to hold on to. But the urge came and went, and he began to climb once more.

When he reached the head of the pass, he stopped to collect himself. He was visibly shaking by now, and his fear of what was going to happen was almost overwhelming. He replayed in his mind the words of the King of the Silver River, reassuring himself that the old man would not have lied. He reminded himself of his origins, of the power that was given him at birth, of the magic that had served him so well. It would not fail him now, he told himself. Nor would he fail in his duty.

It was a duty, after all. It sounded strange to say so, but it was what he had been given to do. To keep them protected. To keep them safe. Those he had brought to this place, friends and family and strangers alike. They were his responsibility, and he must embrace that responsibility as a soldier would his duty.

Still.

He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered Tessa’s name.

“HOW CAN I JUST LEAVE THEM?” he asks the old man. “My wife and child, my friends, all those who care about me?”

The King of the Silver River places a hand on his shoulder. “You won’t be leaving them forever. Only for a little while.”

Hawk does not know what he means, but he is not reassured. Leaving them at all seems wrong.

He thinks that this is unfair, to require him to do this after he has already done so much. He did not ask for this responsibility. He did not ask to have his life directed so. All he has ever wanted is a family, and now it is to be taken away from him. How can anyone make such a sacrifice?

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he says.

“I don’t know that, either,” the old man agrees. “Yet you must.”

He LOOKED WESTWARD then across the vast reaches of the empty, barren land the caravan crossed in coming here, and was reminded anew what the rest of the world was like. In that moment he was reminded, as well, of the dark and twisted place the world would become in the aftermath of the approaching destruction. He could not allow this valley, this newly found haven, and all those he had brought here to live, to fall under that shadow. He could not permit such a monstrous subversion.

But he would be doing so if he failed to act now, as the King of the Silver River had told him he must.

There was no point in waiting any longer.

He took a moment to calm himself, breathing in the night air and staring upward at the stars. He was standing at the highest point of the pass, directly at its center. From this vista, he could see the mountains that ringed the valley, the valley itself, and everything that lay within its vast cradle. Even though the details were hidden by the darkness, he could see them in his mind.

He knelt and placed his hands against the earth.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the magic began to build within him as the familiar sensations began to surface.

He took his time letting it do so, giving it space and freedom to find the necessary level of intensity. He knew what was needed, but not what it would take. He could only assume that the magic he wielded was sufficient and the price it would demand bearable. He knelt with his eyes closed and his head bent, with his arms braced in rigid support, his back bowed, a supplicant seeking relief.

It took a long time for the magic within to fuse with the magic without. When it did, he felt himself begin to join with the earth; felt the elements that composed its body and the life that it sustained to find a home in him. In the smells and tastes and sounds and feel of the world, he found himself made whole, all his separate parts become one. He was the world, and the world was in him.

It was the strangest feeling.

It made him smile.

Then the ground heaved beneath him, and dozens of tiny vents opened from deep underground. A fine gray mist rose into the night, layering the cool air. An opaque curtain rose and spread, winding outward in a vast spiral, filling up the open space with layered shrouds that draped the darkness, one on top of the other. From the place where Hawk knelt, the mist began to infiltrate the trees and rocks and then the mountains themselves. It gained speed and height and thickness, a silent storm front wrapping about, running north and south for miles before bending east and closing the haven that sheltered his followers like a giant’s hands about a cup.

The mountains and the valley they cradled disappeared. Rocks, trees, cliffs, grasses, streams, and rivers–all that encompassed the perimeter of the peaks and their protected valley–slowly faded away.

Hawk’s strength was drained from him as his gypsy morph magic was steadily, implacably leached away.

I am so tired, he thought near the end.

Then the mist swallowed him.

When THE residents OF THE camp that housed the children and their protectors woke the following morning, they noticed the difference in their world right away. The light was altered, although no one was able to agree in what way. The sky was clear and cloudless, a day like any other except that it wasn’t. There were changes in the texture of the air, in the slant of the sunlight, in the way that shadows fell and sounds reverberated.