The necessary component for the spell was a bit of hair, and since Mika had none of his own, he tweaked some from the faithful roan. The horse switched its tail and stamped its hoof but remained at Mika's side, leaning against him slightly.
Mika snapped the book shut and, closing his eyes, recited the words to the spell.
It was working! Excitement coursed through Mika's body as he felt hair sprouting through his scalp! Then, he quirked his head to one side and looked down, puzzled. Something didn't feel right. In fact, something felt definitely wrong. Mika's entire body tingled. All over. Everywhere.
Mika looked at his hand, and his knees went weak. His hand was covered with hair! Dark, curly hair sprouted on the back of his hand, down each of his fingers, and even on his palm! He ripped the gaundet off his other hand and there, too, even the demon digits were sprouting hair. It grew longer and longer as he watched in horror and disbelief.
He felt the hair pushing through the skin on his arms, his legs, stomach, chest, back, and feet. It spilled over the top of his tunic and curled around the arm holes. It curled around his eyes and explored the openings of his nose and mouth. Hysteria rose within him as he realized that the hair was continuing to grow, getting longer and longer with every passing heartbeat. Soon, he would look like a giant walking ball of hair! And when would it stop?
It had to be the gem, Mika thought hysterically. Ever since the gem had been in his possession, spells had been going awry, overcompensating, intensifying, when he did not intend them to. Evidently even the mere proximity of the gem boosted the natural effect of a spell.
A frightened snort from the roan broke Mika's gloomy thoughts. He looked up at the animal and reeled back in shock. The horse was covered with hair as well! Its frightened eyes rolled in terror, and it shook its head up and down violently as though thinking it could shed the strange new burden.
Mike laid a hairy hand on the roan's dense coat and patted it, speaking soothing words through furry lips, spitting curls of hair out of his mouth.
At last, the horse grew calm; Mika slumped to the ground at its hairy hooves, wondering what to do.
Tam trotted up, having been off on business of his own, stopped short a few paces away, and began to growl.
'It's just me, Tam,' Mika said with a sigh. 'Just be glad you weren't here or you'd look like us, too.'
Tam advanced warily, sniffing Mika and the roan carefully before being convinced that they were not monsters. Even then, he eyed them suspiciously and kept his distance, perhaps remembering his own strange experiences with Mika's spellcasting.
Mike continued to ponder solutions as his and his horse's hair grew and grew. Hair remover was his first thought, but then he would be no better off than before, and the horse would look damned funny. At last he decided on the only feasible solution, a heal spell.
Heal spells were cure-alls, capable of returning a person to health after the worst of wounds. But it was a higher-level spell than Mika was usually capable of performing. With his dubious record of late, he was most unwilling to attempt the spell. Only the Great She-Wolf knew what the result would be if he got it wrong, he thought. Still, it was the only solution he could think of… and with the aid of the gem, perhaps it would work.
Wrapping his arms around the horse's hairy neck, he pulled his dangling forelock out of his eyes, opened the spellbook, and studied the spell. It was a fairly short one, and to the point. Closing the book, he held onto the horse's neck with one hand and gripped the gem in the other. Closing his eyes, he began to chant.
The roan whickered and moved nervously beneath his hand. Mika twitched his shoulders and stifled an impulse to scratch. It felt awful! Even worse than when the hair had been growing! The spell was working, though- the hair was reversing itself, drawing back through the same pores it had sprouted from. It itched. It tickled. It was almost unbearable. The roan looked as though it were being consumed by vast numbers of wriggling snakes.
The curls shrank back from Mika's nose, let loose their hold on his tunic, and shriveled back into his palms and the soles of his feet. All over his body he could feel the hair retreating, except on top of his head, where it remained at a decent Wolf Nomad length.
When all was done, he and the roan were returned to normal. The roan looked at Mika, blew hard, and pawed at the ground; Mika wondered if his horse would like him as well as it had before. He sighed deeply, relieved that it was all over. His hair had been restored, even if his hand hadn't, and the last signs of the terrible burns he sustained had disappeared as well.
Tam got to his feet and gave Mika an enigmatic look as the two of them walked back to camp. Mika wrapped himself in his cloak and sighed wearily, wondering if he wouldn't have been better off being a tree-cutter or a hunter. Then, relaxing on his bedroll, he fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.
The days following passed in much the same way as the first, except that Mika attempted to keep as much space as possible between himself and Lotus Blossom. It didn't always work; one night Lotus Blossom pinched him on the bottom and winked at him suggestively as he knelt to serve himself some food. She did not pursue the matter, but Mika lost his appetite completely.
Several nights later, as they camped beside a low outcropping of gray rock, the only object of note on the vast empty prairie, Mika brought up the subject of their destination.
'Why, we're going to Exag, Mika. That's the plan. I know you're anxious to confront that demon again, so I'm plotting a course that will take us directly to him,' answered Hornsbuck. 'It can be dangerous, three alone riding open like this, but I knew that you would welcome the challenge should anyone be foolish enough to try us.'
'Hornsbuck, I thought we were going home first,' Mika said in near desperation. 'Back to the clan. I–I'm out of everything. All my ungents and potions and healing herbs, they're all gone. I need more! We need to go back to the Far Fringe! What if something happened? What if one of us got hurt? I wouldn't be able to do anything. We could die!'
'Blossom, just listen to what the lad is saying,' roared Hornsbuck. 'Why, I didn't know you worried about us so. I'm touched, I really am. And for that reason alone, I won't take us home. I can't let you put our welfare above your own good. No, lad, we're heading straight for Exag, with no stops on the way!'
'Hornsbuck, what about the Phantom Forest?' Lotus Blossom asked slowly, twirling the end of her braid between thick fingers. 'Be it not somewhere close? The boy could certainly refill his herb supply there. And I myself wouldn't mind hoisting a few flagons of their fine barberry wine, just to be polite, of course. Then we'll be on our way in no time.'
Hornsbuck pondered the question while Mika strove to remember what little he knew about the Phantom Forest. As far as he knew, it was only a legend and not a real place.
'What's she talking about, Hornsbuck?' Mika asked as the big nomad combed his beard with his fingers, always a sign of deep thought.
'It be a place of much magic,' Hornsbuck replied at length. 'There are Wolf Nomads there, though of a different sort than us. But all things considered, they still be nomads and will be helpful to those in need. Aye, woman, it is a good thought. We'll head for the Phantom Forest, but then it's off to Exag.'
Hornsbuck corrected their course slighdy so that they were traveling southeasterly. Two days later they entered the forest.
At first, there was nothing to be seen but open prairie. Then, miragelike, the forest appeared, almost seeming to float above the ground like a vision induced by heat. It drifted before them, insubstantial and wraithlike, until the very moment that they entered the forest and actually rode between the massive trunks, inhaling the rich scent of the tall evergreens.
They trod upon the crackling roanwood leaves and breathed the spicy cinnamon aroma. Leaves cascaded down from high above, each leaf as large as Mika's head, twirling red and bronze and yellow torches of color as they spiralled down through the broad beams of dusty sunlight that broke between the branches. And even though it was not his own forest, nor his clan, Mika's heart was light and he felt as though he were home.
Mika assumed that, phantom or not, this forest must be part of the larger Burneal Forest, which stretched for more than a thousand miles across the northern frontier, separating and creating a barrier between Greyhawk and the mysterious Lands of Black Ice.
'Have you ever been north of the forest?' Mika asked Hornsbuck the first night, as they lounged contentedly around the roaring fire, having eaten their fill of a plump roansbuck doe.
'You mean into the Black Lands?' asked Hornsbuck as he and Lotus Blossom guzzled their nightly allotment of ale. 'Aye, we've been there, RedTail an' me. It was back a while, back before that last time I met up with you in the Howling Hills. Remember that time, Blossom?'
