concealed in the path of the diligent search. Gradually they probed and prodded, combing the valley without success.
'He may well be gone already,' said the cleric. 'Or lurking on the heights, above our reach.'
Gwyeth looked at the craggy slopes looming above them to either side and realized that Wentfeld spoke the truth. Still, having ordered his men into the search, he would not embarrass himself by revoking the order. Instead, he urged them forward with curses and abuse, trying to hurry them over the rough terrain.
A shout came from the far right of the line, and he urged his charger there at a gallop, hoping to find some sorcerous wretch in the grip of his men. Instead, he saw that the cry had come from a clumsy oaf who had scrambled too far up the steep wall in his search. He had fallen into a clump of rocks and now lay there moaning, with his leg jutting to the side at an unnatural angle.
'Fool!' roared Gwyeth, incensed at the further delay. 'I am surrounded by idiots!'
Pryat Wentfeld went to the man and cast a healing spell, which straightened the broken leg enough that it could repair itself properly.
'It will be too weak for him to walk,' the priest explained when he returned to Gwyeth. 'And it would be premature to expend my healing magic for this accident.'
Reluctantly Gwyeth agreed and ordered two men, both of whom accepted the assignment with obvious relief, to carry the injured man back to the cantrev. Already, he knew, it was well into the afternoon, and yet they had progressed only a quarter of the way up to the Moonwell.
'Now, move!' he bellowed, spurring his horse into a trot that would easily outdistance the trudging footmen. 'Pick up your feet and march!' Wentfeld, the only other horseman, followed his brisk pace.
Several of the veterans among the men-at-arms added their own curses to the nobleman's orders, and slowly the column picked up speed, worming along the trail, the footmen marching with collars raised against the chill and wet. Many of the Ffolkmen cast headlong glances back at the place where the forest had stood. Those who had chopped their way through the tangle looked at the blisters on their hands where they had grasped axes and remembered their keen steel blades hacking into firm and unyielding wood, and they muttered under their breath about unnatural dangers.
For an hour, Gwyeth maintained the brutal pace, reining in when he got too far ahead and exhorting his troops with insults and invective. Finally the cleric drew up beside him and spoke, in a voice that carried to the knight's ears alone.
'My lord, they will be no good to you if they all collapse from exhaustion before we reach the well! We must allow them to rest and then resume at a more humane pace.'
It took a supreme effort of Gwyeth's will to suppress his sudden anger toward the priest. After a moment of enforced, cool reflection, however, he realized that the man spoke the truth. In frustration, he looked before him.
The rocky valley curved to the right, and the gray clouds scudded past the granite tors that loomed to either side of the trail. The path here was smooth, albeit narrow. In several places, herdsmen in years past had cleared the brush on either side, and one of these clearings lay a hundred paces ahead, beside the valley's clear, shallow stream.
'We pause for water and a few moments rest!' Gwyeth announced, leading his men to the spot. 'Check your weapons, here. Our next march will conclude at the Moonwell!'
Most of the troops flopped to the ground, while some of them knelt beside the brook that ran through the center of the valley. A number of men sat beside a great pile of sticks that had been piled at the edge of the clearing by whatever shepherd had cleared it in the past.
Gwyeth himself dismounted, removing his helmet and gauntlets to stretch and pace. The men-at-arms avoided him as much as possible, which suited the knight well.
A shout of alarm whipped his head around. He heard multiple screams of terror and saw a full score of his men leap to their feet and flee in panic, leaving their weapons on the ground. They were the men who had sat beside the pile of dried sticks.
But now that brush moved! Gwyeth gaped in shock as he saw a stick bend down with liquid suppleness and crawl onto the ground where the men had been sitting. Other sticks, too, slithered across the ground in a distinctive motion.
One man, who had lain flat on the ground with the chance to rest, now screamed and stumbled backward, a whiplike form lashing at his throat. He pulled it free and cast the hissing thing aside, then pitched forward onto the ground, gasping and gagging.
'Adders!' cried one of the men, stumbling as he fled and madly crawling away from the venomous serpents.
'Snakes-from sticks!' shrieked another.
'Cowards! Don't flee them! Fight!' cried Gwyeth, drawing his own sword and stepping to the nearest snake. The viper whipped itself into a menacing coil, hissing, its forked tongue flickering toward the knight, but the great broadsword chopped downward across the center of the coil, instantly slicing the snake into several pieces. The segments twitched and flailed for a moment, then grew still.
'They die if you strike them! Kill them, you curs!' he shouted, attacking and decapitating another of the serpents. A few of his men seized their own weapons, and in moments the snakes, which had numbered no more than a dozen or so, lay in many bleeding pieces on the ground.
Pryat Wentfeld rose from the still form of the man who had been bitten in the throat. 'I can do nothing for him,' the priest said grimly. 'He is already dead.'
'All gods curse this unnatural place!' growled Gwyeth as his men cast fearful glances among themselves. The armored warrior felt heat surge into his head as he struggled with the frustration of not knowing who attacked them and being unable to strike back.
Blood flushed Gwyeth's face as he looked at the rest of his shamefaced troops. His eyes bulged, and the force of his rage strangled his throat so that he couldn't shout, or else he would undoubtedly have invented new volumes of curses as his legacy to the tongue of the Ffolk.
'A
'Aye,' grunted a seasoned veteran who had been a young man in the days when druids still had power in the land. He ignored Gwyeth's look of fury and continued courageously. 'A forest that doesn't exist. . sticks that become snakes. These are the powers of a druid, my lord.'
'He speaks the truth,' said the cleric, placing a hand upon Gwyeth's shoulder. With the touch, the knight felt the fury drain from his body. Again he had control of his mouth and his tongue. Though he remained angry, rage no longer held him in full control.
'This is part of the charlatanry!' Gwyeth said firmly. 'Whatever power has created the illusory restoration of the well now seeks to make us believe that a druid has returned to menace us!'
'It's also true,' said the priest, addressing the men in support of their captain, 'that other clerics may gain powers similar to these in many respects. This is no proof that a druid has returned!'
The cleric lowered his voice, however, when he concluded to Gwyeth. 'Still, this is evidence that we face someone of more than ordinary ability.'
Gwyeth cast a scornful look over the sullen faces of his men. Many, he saw, gazed mournfully down the valley, and he knew that they regretted their presence here and longed to return home. One lost to a broken leg, and now a man killed by an Abyss-cursed viper! And not a blow struck in their own defense!
'The first man who deserts me will suffer the sting of the lash!' he blustered. 'And the next one will be hanged for cowardice! Now form a column, you craven dogs. We'll march up to that stinking pond and see this curse removed!'
Gwyeth mounted quickly, but even propelled by the kicks and curses of the veterans, his men-at-arms were slow to take their formation on the trail. Gwyeth tried to ignore the dark looks of anger and fear that he saw on their faces. He didn't care how they felt about this mission, only that they remained with him until its conclusion.
Finally the men were ready. The cleric rode behind the knight, since the trail was too narrow for more than one horse, and Gwyeth drew his sword as a precaution. Then, peering suspiciously into the heights around them and up as much of the length of the trail before them as he could see, he urged his charger forward and led his men
