Prophet of Moonshae

Gullwing. At the same time, the black-sailed Vulture slowly rolled onto her side and then vanished, along with her crew, beneath the waves.

For a moment, the crew of the Gullwing stood rapt, as if the sea itself had gone silent around them. Eyes searched the mist and the clouds, expecting the horrors to return any instant… but the sky remained still.

Not so the sea.

'Bail!' cried Brandon as great spurts of foaming sea burst through the cracked planking of the bow. His crew leaped to their buckets, while others returned to their oars. Alicia, Keane, and Brandon kept alert for a return of the monster from the skies, but it didn't reappear.

'You-you scared the dragon away,' the princess said to Keane in amazement.

'The monster will be back sooner or later,' the mage assured her. 'As to the loss of that ship, it is a matter of sadness. I'm certain those men were just the pawns of the power that seeks to send us to war.'

'My friends, the wizard and the princess,' said Brandon, coming up to them with a weary smile. 'We would all be dead now if not for you,' he told Keane. 'And for this, you shall always have the gratitude of me and my people. And you, dear princess-you fight like a dervish! I'm more glad than ever that we battle as allies and not foes.'

Alicia shook her head, disparaging the comment. In her mind, she thought of the blows delivered by Brandon, the sorcery wielded by Keane, and even the benign magic of Tavish. Her contribution seemed paltry indeed.

Water splashed around their ankles. The Gullwing foundered, and they all wondered if they would be here to greet the monster upon its return.

For Gwyeth of Blackstone, the dawn was shattered by the screams of twoscore of his men as the wretches awakened trapped within a twisted mat of creepers and vines, plants that had sprouted during the night to entangle the unfortunate warriors who slumbered in their path. Howling, they struggled to escape, but all of them remained pinned to the ground by their arms, legs, necks, and torsos. Unhurt but terrified, they pleaded for help from their comrades.

The rest of the troop set upon the thicket with knives and shortswords, chopping and hacking at the verdant bonds imprisoning their compatriots. Soon they freed all the trapped men, though several had suffered nicks and cuts from blades wielded by their overzealous comrades.

Morale had reached a nadir as the men started up the last few miles of the trail to the Moonwell. Gwyeth, in the lead, mounted upon his charger, was in as bad a humor as the troops of his company. Pryat Wentfeld rode well behind the knight as the armored man muttered and cursed his way up the rock-strewn mountain track. But the entanglement, it seemed, was the last obstacle in their path. Less than two hours later, the mounted knight saw the tops of the tall cedars waving in the breeze. Shortly afterward, the pond came into view.

A hundred Ffolk or more, raggedly dressed and unarmed, scattered from the path of Gwyeth's column as he led them into the vale. The knight dismounted as they drew near the pool, and he made a point of ignoring the rabble that had ceased its flight at a respectful distance.

'There, lord. That's the one we dropped,' explained Backar, indicating a great cedar trunk stretched along the ground. 'You see the stump, right th-'

The man's voice trailed off in shock. Gwyeth, too, stared in disbelief. The tree, he could see, had obviously been felled recently. Its needles were still green, and moist pine sap gummed on the exposed end.

Yet the stump could not be seen. Where it should have been, another great cedar grew into the sky, nearly equalling the others in its lofty height.

'I swear, Sir Gwyeth!' Backar was nearly blubbering in confusion and chagrin. 'There! Where that tree grows! Two days ago we left it a ragged stump!'

'Never mind!' snapped the knight, angrily scowling at the assembled peasants. 'It's no more than I would have expected from this bespooked place. It makes it more important than ever to have done with the curse!'

Pryat Wentfeld had also dismounted. Quietly he performed another casting with the pinch of flour, the same he had used to examine the hallucinatory forest. This time the white powder flew away from him, dusting into the crowd of pilgrims to settle across the garments of one man-a man, the cleric noted, who seemed remarkably young and, though thin, possessed of a wiry strength that belied his appearance when compared to the ragged lot around him.

'There!' hissed the priest, pointing at the marked man, who had begun to sidle away. ' That is your druid!'

'Seize him!' cried Gwyeth, who would have chased the varlet himself, except that his heavy plate mail practically immobilized him. 'Bring him to me!'

The thin bearded man identified by the cleric turned and sprinted away, but a dozen men-at-arms, led by Backar, quickly overhauled and tackled him. They dragged him back to Gwyeth as they bound his hands behind his back.

'So you're the charlatan who pretends to practice the arts of druidhood!' the knight said, sneering. The man remained silent. Looking more closely, Gwyeth saw a hard determination in the druid's green eyes. His insolence annoyed the knight, who cuffed the prisoner across the face.

'The goddess shall prevail,' hissed the druid, spitting out a broken tooth. 'It's too late for you to stop her!'

'Silence, knave!' Gwyeth slapped him again before he could speak more of his treasonous drivel. The knight saw that already some of the more superstitious men looked at the prisoner with expressions of wonder, even awe. He knew he had to put a stop to this, and he drew his dagger, ready to slit the man's throat without further ceremony.

'My lord,' said the cleric, anticipating his act. 'Perhaps the deed would be better done with formality-an example lest anyone else presume to impersonate a member of that forgotten order.'

'What do you suggest?' Clenching his dagger, Gwyeth held his blow long enough to listen.

'You say you shall burn the brush after you fell the trees. Why not affix yon charlatan to a stake in the midst of that fire? Such a death would be only suitable for this murderer, and the spectacle would also make a far better tale than to hear of him slain by your dagger while bound before you.'

The image of the druid burning at the stake flamed in Gwyeth's imagination. The cleric was right.

'Very well. Detail six men to guard him,' he told Backar. 'Bind his feet and gag his mouth as well. He shall die by fire before this day is out.'

Quickly he instructed fifty of his men to scatter the crowd of pilgrims who had sullenly watched this proceeding. The men-at-arms went about their task with relish, using clubs and the flats of their swords. The last of the ragged onlookers soon fled for the safety of the high rocks around the vale, where they looked down with unconcealed dismay.

The rest of Gwyeth's men hefted axes even before the pilgrims had been driven away. They started toward the grove of cedars, and soon the ringing of twoscore axemen sounded a cadence of death in the valley of the Moonwell.

Orange flames crackled upward from the weatherbeaten barn. The pyre marked the destruction of a season's precious straw and grain and the livestock that would have survived on the fodder. The farmer and his family had been butchered in the yard as the five pitiful figures had tried to defend their home from twenty-five mounted, armored knights.

'Valiant but stupid,' Larth announced as his own black charger reared back, kicking anxiously at the flames. With the remark, the brigand dismissed the lives and deaths and all the hopes and aspirations of his victims. It was a mental tactic he had begun to use with increasing frequency as his reign of terror swept along the coast of Gnarhelm.

The thickset knight preferred not to remember the details of faces and forms that marked the bodies in his wake. By all measures except the nagging voice of his conscience, the mission had been exceptionally successful. He had lost only five of his riders, and the survivors had claimed enough treasure to make them all rich men.

The losses had come during a skirmish with hundreds of northern axemen, led by the King of Olafstaad. The armored knights, all mounted, fought the northmen on a grassy moor, and the horses had inflicted horrible losses on the footmen.