He had managed to convince himself of this as, at dawn, he climbed the stairs to the living quarters. Before retiring, he would tell Robyn of their plans. She would be delighted, he knew.
But again there was no answer, and a sick feeling of worry gripped him. In panic, he smashed the door with his shoulder and then kicked it aside with his boot. He stumbled into her room, looking frantically around. He saw her window standing open, with its airy view high above the courtyard, but the druid, together with her staff and scrolls, was gone.
The druid, in fact, currently relished a form of freedom she had never before imagined. As the wind, she gusted and eddied, sailed and then slowed. She felt a great expansive-ness, freed from the cloak of flesh. Her senses probed everywhere, pulling in the touch and sight and smell of the world.
For a long day and through the following night she blew, caring little for the passing of time. Fatigue was a thing unimaginable. The moors rolled past, and she dallied and swirled in the foothills below the highlands. She paused at a tiny cantrev, and even the woodsmoke of breakfast fires tickled her nostrils with a delightful odor.
The white ribbon of Corweil Road meandered below her as she swirled toward the center of Gwynneth Island. Finally she judged the time had come to turn northward, toward Myrloch Vale.
The power of the scroll possessed her completely. The words梤unes, actually梙ad been vibrant with power. Now that magic, sanctified by the gods in a time long past,
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became Robyn's tool. She used it with skill and vigor, becoming a new element in pursuit of her goal.
She hurled herself at the highlands, storming up a vale, roaring through a narrow defile. Now Robyn was a wind of storm, gathering strength as she rose into the chill, barren reaches.
The forested hills of Corweil still glowed green, as the fir trees cloaking them retained their foliage even against the approach of winter. She sensed little wildlife, as the deer and badger and rabbit had all migrated to the lower reaches for the cold season.
As she rose higher, the trees gave way to rocky, barren slopes. Great patches of snow lay in drifts along many of the ridges. Deep ravines fell into chasms, and then valleys that trailed to the warm, green country behind. She did not sense the waning of her enchantment, but the spell had begun to lose its potency. Though mighty, it could last for but a limited time.
Snowflakes pranced around her as she crested the great ridge, the summit that separated the human realms of Corweil from the wilderness of Myrloch Vale.
And here the storm broke into chaos.
Robyn crashed into a barrier of evil so potent, so pervasive, that her soaring momentum vanished into nothingness. Where the land behind her had been clean and healthful, full of nature's vitality, she recoiled now, faced with a vision of death, decay, and corruption. The devastation began at the crest and trailed into the vastness of Myrloch Vale.
Even Myrloch itself, a great lake of crystalline azure in Robyn's mind, had succumbed to the rot. Visible in the distance to the north, it was now dark and dull, the water seeming more a stretch of brackish swamp than a vast loch. The forests around it now sprawled lifeless, barren skeletons of trees rising forlornly from blackened ground.
The magic that had carried her thus far vanished in the face of a far stronger and more immediate power. In the flash of that instant, Robyn's body became flesh. She crashed among the rocks at the crest of the highest peak
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and lay there stunned, shivering, and bleeding.
But the worst injury had been inflicted upon her soul. The desecration of so vast an area, and the totality of the destruction, tore at every fiber of her faith. How could she cope with power such as this?
Dimly she realized that her arm lay behind her, twisted at an unnatural angle by jagged rocks. She shifted slightly, and pain knifed through her shoulder.
The immediacy of her suffering brought her attention back to her own predicament. She sat up, wincing in pain, and knew that her arm was broken, probably in several places. Her lips and mouth were swollen and bleeding. She spat, and several chips of teeth fell onto the rocks.
As she looked up, the expanse of the vale again came before her vision, and she moaned with despair. The cold wind, an inanimate thing now, pulled at her torn robe, sucking the heat from her exposed skin. Now flakes of snow swirled around her, stinging the scraped skin along her face and cheeks.
Mother, I have failed you, she thought in despair. She did not know if she spoke to her spiritual mother梩he goddess, mother of all the isles梠r to her true mother, the druid she had never known. It didn't matter, really.
I shall die on this rock. My anger has sent me on a fool's quest, but must the punishment be so harsh?
Slowly the pain disappeared from most of her body, though her arm and shoulder continued to throb. Was the chill numbing her senses, or had the pain indeed eased?
She twisted again among the rocks, trying to avoid a root she felt jabbing into her back, and then her mind began to work. There could be no root where there were no plants. The plainly wooden surface annoying her must be something else.
Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she turned to see her staff pinned between two rocks. Awkwardly, with her good hand, she pulled it out and laid it across her lap. She had no strength to call for its magic, but its mere presence comforted her nonetheless.
Another unnatural thing caught her eye, and she gasped
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with relief as she saw the ivory tube containing the Scrolls of Arcanus. The container lay below her feet, in a shadowy crack beneath an overhanging boulder. With relief, she confirmed that she had carried her talismans with her.
The accoutrements of faith brought hope back once again. Perhaps she would not die here. It would take more than a few bruises to break the will of a druid of the vale!
She closed her eyes and slowly, carefully, rehearsed the words to a simple spell. She was weak, and her mouth was wounded. She could not take a chance on misstating the incantation.
"Mafro, karelius doniti... arum!"
She whispered the words to her spell, and the healing magic spread through her shoulder, into the length of her arm. She felt the torn muscles mend, and even sensed the bonding as the shattered ends of bone fused again into one. For precious seconds, the curing spell tingled within her.
But then the magic faded, dying away in a last flutter of healing. She grew weak and dizzy, finally slumping against her rocky seat. For a moment, her world went black, and then she awakened with a start. She moved her arm experimentally, and pain again lanced through her shoulder, but it was more bearable now, and the arm answered the commands of her brain in its movement, however begrudgingly.
The healing spell of a druid was not potent, but it did help. And after a brief period of prayer, she could use it again. Closing her eyes and forcing herself to ignore her pain, Robyn relaxed. The familiar sensation of peace came over her, and she called upon the mother to restore her spell to her.
She awaited the smooth flow of power that would be the answer to her prayer, but there was nothing. Again, and a third time, she prayed for her spell, but she could get no response from her goddess. A chill sensation of fright and loneliness closed about her, and she found it impossible to concentrate any longer on prayer. Grim and afraid, she tried to move.
She found that she could stand up and did so. Carefully lifting the scrolls, she looked for a pouch or pocket in which
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to place them. Settling for her apron, Robyn carefully wrapped the tube in cloth, binding it against her back. She found that she had on the garments she wore at the time of her casting梤obe, apron, belt and boots梐long with her staff and scrolls.
But nothing else. She had neither flint to spark a fire nor dagger to strike it on. Her clothing was woefully inadequate to face a chill night, even one not spent atop a craggy, snowswept peak.
She turned, once, to look at the rolling foothills to the south, falling away to the green moors of central Corwell. The sun still beamed there, dancing among white clouds to illuminate a low hill or small copse of brilliant oak, blazing with the colors of late autumn.
But overhead roiled heavier, more ominous clouds. The snow became thicker by the minute and soon began to gather in the cracks among the broken rocks. The clouds lay like a leaden quilt across the breadth of the vale, casting the huge valley in a pall of shadow. Though the snow seemed to be falling only among the highest mountains, Robyn could see no sign of encouragement or comfort in the entire brooding vista.
Struck by a thought, she looked in the scroll tube for the parchment of wind mastery, but it was not there. She was not surprised, for she knew that a druidic spell written upon a scroll would vanish as soon as it was cast. She suspected that the clerical spells worked the same.
But there were other ways to travel, and many of them did not require her to walk down the side of this mountain. Once she had flown from Gwynneth to Callidyrr in the body of a hawk, and she could certainly cross a narrow band of foothills in the same form.
She closed her eyes, calling the birdlike image into her mind, preparing for the familiar shifting of her form. And then a blinding pain flashed behind her eyes and she sat heavily upon the jagged rocks. Reaching to either side, she balanced herself upon her hands梟ot wings, as she had expected梐nd opened her eyes. The same weakness that had caused her to faint after casting the healing spell
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drained her muscles of strength and caused her head to spin.
For an awful moment, she felt a horrible surge of panic rising in her stomach. What had happened to her powers? She shook her head, banishing the fear, and sought a logical explanation. It must be fatigue, she told herself梩he weakness caused by her wounds and her lack of sleep. Certainly it would pass.
Resolutely she started toward the north on foot. Holding her staff in her right hand as an aid to balance among the treacherous rocks, she started down the long shoulder of the mountain.
For an hour or more, she made steady progress. The walking wanned her body, and all her attention was focused on the placement of the next step. She had no time to brood about her surroundings or her plight.
The steep ridge led to a broad shoulder. The air felt noticeably warmer here, and the snow had nearly stopped. She looked into the gray clouds surrounding her and imagined that she saw all manner of hideous, deformed figures there.
Suddenly she stopped in shock. Something had moved within those looming clouds. She saw it again, a vague shape that soared through a thinning of the mist, only to disappear again within the folds of the cloud. It could have been a great bird, or something else. Whatever its nature, it looked to be nearly the size of a man.
Nervously she tightened her grip on her staff. By instinct, she probed with her feet, finding a broad, flat slab to provide a secure foothold. All the while, her eyes searched the clouds on all sides and above her. For many minutes, she stood alert, unmoving except to roll her head to look everywhere.
But she saw nothing, nothing except the vastness of suddenly threatening nature. Her feet began to ache from the chill of inaction, and she started to descend again. Robyn moved more carefully now, cautiously planting each foot on the broken ground and then searching the skies for the hidden threat.
The length of the broad shoulder behind her, she once
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again confronted a steeply descending ridge. She slid along a knife's edge of stone, ignoring the dizzying drop on either side. She saw two tiny lakes below her. One, to the south, lay beneath a white sheet of ice, covered by a thin layer of snow. A dusting covered the lake's small basin, only the larger jumbles of rocks poking through as proof of solid firmament below.
The other lake lay to the north, just beyond the narrow gap in the crest that marked the border between Corwell and the vale. Here no ice had formed, and no snow remained on the ground. The rocks of the valley floor were rounded and worn, a dark gray shade. The water itself festered in choking weeds. Patches of scum floated on the surface, among the brownish green tendrils of algae.
Robyn reached a sharp drop. She looked at a wide ledge, twenty feet below, and considered jumping. The alternative was to turn and face the rock, working her way carefully down one of the wide cracks in the stone face. At the same time, she would leave herself terribly exposed to any menace from the sky. She looked again at the drop and realized that a slight miscalculation in her jump would plummet her to certain death, off one side of the ridge or the other.
The clouds still oppressed her, but her descent had carried her far below the heavy gray mass. She stared intently for minutes but saw nothing moving among them. Tucking the staff across her belt and lashing it in place with the apron, she turned to face the rock and climbed over the edge.
A small fissure gave her a toehold, and she reached down to grab a spur of stone with her hand. She lowered her other foot and wedged it between two outcroppings of rock. And then she felt a presence behind her.
Instantly she let go of the rock, dropping free at the first prickling of alarm. Thumping to the ledge, she fell to the side to absorb the force of her fall and then whirled to stare upward.
Suddenly a creature crashed into the wall where her back had been. She heard a cracking of bone as the thing, eerily silent, fell beside her. She dared not look at it as she desper-
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ately tore her staff from her back and climbed to her feet, scanning the skies for any other attackers. Her timely drop had saved her life, for the thing would have smashed her body brutally if she had remained on the cliff.
But what was it? The limp body sprawled beside her, issuing a heavy stench of rot and corruption. She felt her eyes drawn toward the corpse, but then another flash of movement in the sky drew her full attention.
She saw another of the things梚t looked like a great bird梔iving from the clouds, with a third plummeting behind it. Now the staff was free, held in both hands before her as she stared in disbelief, and then revulsion, at the soaring creatures.
They came soundlessly, their mouths gaping. Their heads were skeletal but unmistakably the skulls of deer. And the broad, menacing antlers spreading above the head of each confirmed the monster's staglike origins.
But the body was feathered and gaunt, like some huge vulture. And each of them swooped like a hawk, still making no sound. Robyn could now see the sharp, wolfish fangs that filled each hungry maw.
