Prophet of Moonshae

The column, which included the cantrev's ready men-at-arms plus more than threescore hastily recruited troops from the militia raised in the town itself, marched out of the manor's gatehouse several hours past dawn. Most carried swords or axes, though some two dozen carried heavy crossbows. Sir Gwyeth was taking no chances.

The sky remained gray, and a chill wind blustered, bringing frequent squalls of rain. All in all, it was miserable weather for a march, but even that didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the footmen. Perhaps Gwyeth's enticement of ten gold pieces for each member who remained with the expedition through the completion of its task served to warm the souls of these avaricious guardsmen-or perhaps they all sensed the danger that the resurgent Moonwell and its attendant faith presented to the mines that were their means of living.

In any event, the men raised a crude marching song, which the cleric pretended not to hear. Gwyeth felt as bold as any general who had ever embarked upon a war of conquest.

'Have you any clues as to the nature of this enchantment?' he asked the pryat as they made their way along the broad trail that preceded the narrow, steeply climbing path leading directly to the Moonwell's vale.

'Dark magic, undoubtedly,' noted the cleric, who had given the matter little thought once he had received his pouch of gold. 'But with the faith of Helm behind us, we'll make short work of it, I'm certain.'

The good pryat knew that Helm, as one of the New Gods of the isles, was inherently superior to the primitive Earthmother the Ffolk had once cherished. Though Helm was not an evil god, he was ambitious, and a resurgence of any rival was something that ever vigilant deity regarded with little pleasure. Therefore it pleased Wentfeld doubly, for the profit and for the knowledge that he served his master's will in this endeavor.

'What can we do to reverse the effect?' inquired the knight. 'It seems to be potent sorcery.'

Pryat Wentfeld reflected. 'Polluting the pond will be the most effective tactic, I believe. It was done successfully to a Moonwell many years ago with coal, but I should think a mountain of ashes would serve as well.'

'The trees-we burn them and dump the ashes into the pool!' Gwyeth liked the idea.

'Correct. If we have to, we persevere until the thing is nothing more than a patch of grimy muck!'

'Hold-what's this?' demanded Gwyeth as the trail curved around a steep foothill.

'Where goes the path?' inquired Pryat Wentfeld, also puzzled.

The valley floor, which they remembered as a bare and rocky expanse, vanished behind a choking growth of forest. Oaks and pines, tangled with trailing creepers and densely packed among bristling thornbushes, filled the expanse from one steeply sloped side of the valley to the other.

'This is the trail, as the gods are my witnesses! It follows the stream! Backar-come here, man!' Gwyeth called to the sergeant-at-arms who had led the abortive expedition to the Moonwell two days earlier.

Backar, who marched near the head of the footmen, hastened forward at his knight's command. 'Yes, my lord! What is it?' He saw the wooded tangle before them and gasped. 'Curses to the Abyss, sir-this was plain and clear two days ago!'

'Are you certain you came this way?'

'Aye, lord. There is no other good way!' Backar, still stinging from his previous failure, swore his sincerity.

'Go and seek a path, then!' commanded Gwyeth. The man, with several assistants, hurried forward to examine the wall of dense growth. From his position on his proud charger, the knight could see no suggestion of a break that would have allowed a small child to pass through the overgrowth, much less a band of armed men.

The sides of the valley, to the right and the left, rose unusually steep at this point to form a pair of rocky bluffs standing like gateposts. The forest formed the gate, and Gwyeth had the unsettling impression that the wood had been placed here, where it would form the most effective barrier. The clouds capped the valley, covering the heights with oppressive weight and yielding their steady wash of rain over the increasingly disheartened humans below.

Backar and the others hunted across the face of the tangle, pressing back branches, hacking away creepers, and trampling thorns. After some minutes, during which Gwyeth grew increasingly restless with the delay, the man trotted back to report.

'There's no path, sir. It's solid as a briar patch. From the size of the trees, it could have been here for years, but I swear it-'

'I know!' snapped the knight. 'Well, stop making excuses. Get out your axes and hack us a path!'

The song of the men had faded away when they discovered the inexplicable barrier, and now the knight and the cleric heard muttered curses as a dozen men shouldered axes and advanced to the wall of the thorny forest. They began to chop at the wood that closed over the path, slowly carving a tunnel-like path.

'Wider!' demanded Gwyeth. 'I've got a horse to get through there, imbeciles!'

In the meantime, Pryat Wentfeld dismounted and advanced to the edge of the wood. He removed a small pinch of flour from a pouch at his side and muttered a short, arcane command. At his words, the particles of flour whisked forward with magical speed and stuck to the nearest leaves, sticks, and trunks, outlining a small area in white.

'As I suspected,' he reported, returning to Gwyeth's side and remounting. 'The forest is magical in nature.'

'That helps a lot,' growled the knight sourly. 'Can you make it disappear the same way?'

'I have an enchantment that will dispel magic,' the cleric responded, ignoring his companion's tone. 'But I can cast it only once per day. I fear it would be unwise to expend it here, when we don't know what other obstacles might be placed in our path farther up the trail.' The priest didn't add another disturbing thought in his head: that the power behind this enchanted forest might well be too great for his own magic to dispel.

Gwyeth had to agree that the priest spoke the truth, though his men chopped their way into the forest with agonizing sluggishness.

Two hours passed before a drenched Backar trudged back to the knight, who had dismounted and paced beneath a few stunted cedars that grew beside the trail.

'Sir Gwyeth, we can see light through the trees now. It would appear that we near the end,' reported the obviously fatigued guardsman.

'Redouble your efforts, then!' snapped the knight. 'We've wasted more than enough time here already!'

'Aye, my lord.' The man headed back to the work party as Gwyeth and the cleric mounted, urging their horses forward. They waited with growing irritation as yet another half an hour passed before the men finally broke through.

The knight saw gray daylight at the end of a tunnel of verdant darkness, and though he had to duck his head beneath the trailing vines overhead, he spurred his steed forward in his eagerness to press on. The column of men fell in behind him, and in another minute, he had passed through the barrier, which proved to be no more than a hundred feet thick, though in width it was sufficient to seal off the valley.

'Press on! We'll make up the time lost. Double march!' He turned to command his men to follow and practically fell off his horse in astonishment. The men of the column gasped and shouted in consternation at the same time.

The forest had disappeared! Even as the footmen worked their way through the narrow tunnel, the tangled shrubbery blinked away. Making no sound, leaving no sign of its previous presence, everything from the greatest trees to the smallest thornbushes simply vanished, as if it had never been there at all.

'By the gods, man! What deviltry is this?' demanded the knight, pointing for the cleric's benefit.

Wentfeld looked momentarily nonplussed as he studied the transformation, but then the priest turned and squinted around the valley ahead of them. He saw no one-only a small ground squirrel that scampered out of the path of the approaching humans.

'It's not only sorcery, as I told you,' Pryat Wentfeld explained, 'but someone controls it-someone within our sight, for the dispelling was cast as it occurred.'

'Find the varlet!' shouted Gwyeth, drawing and waving his sword over his head. 'Form a skirmish line. Take him alive!' he shouted at his men.

The footmen drew their swords, except for the two dozen with crossbows, who held back from the others and covered their advance. Next the footmen moved into a well-spaced line across the narrow valley and partway up the steep and rocky sides. The formation slowed their progress considerably, but no person could have remained