A Change in the Weather

Chapter 76: A face from the past

2 November, 2008 – 2:33 pm

Scarlet felt thoroughly miserable. Not just with herself, but with the situation that she’d found herself in. She sat on a moss-covered log with her head in her hands – damp and tired and covered in filth. Her hair was a mess of tangles – thick and and wet and plastered with dirt, but her appearance was the least of her worries and she looked at Hillary with a glare that told him that she would not tolerate any more of his patronising remarks.

Thomas – who was equally dishevelled – sat beside her, nervously holding the filigree case. Maybe it would spark into life once more and speak to him of things that he didn’t wish to hear. Since it had wound down, he had absolutely no idea what to do with it, but one thing was certain: he didn’t feel like winding it up again, so he just sat there fiddling with it instead.

Hillary leant heavily on his staff and peered down at Scarlet. He was battling with feelings of confusion and rejection since her sudden flight into the wilderness. The wilderness of Faerie of all places! Why would she have felt safer there than together with him? Just thinking about it seemed insanity.

But something that she’d said had pushed itself to the forefront of his thoughts; the possibility that his arch enemies had somehow found a way through to Faerie didn’t bear thinking about. It was something that he found increasingly difficult to believe in.

‘It’s practically impossible. We came through the last portal.’

Wendle padded over and nudged his nose between Scarlet’s knees and rested his head there. She patted him absently then turned her head and eyed Hillary suspiciously.

‘How can you be so sure?’ she said. ‘Are you talking about the same portal that you came though - when you were here before?’

For a moment Hillary was lost for words. So this is what it was all about. If only he’d been honest with everyone from the start. ‘I can’t keep anything from you, can I?’ He looked at her, but her expression remained steely and piercing. ‘If you really must know, I have been here before.’

Scarlet felt a smirk creep across her face.

‘But I do have my reasons for my silence,’ he added. ‘The last time I was here, things happened. Things that I was ashamed of. Things that I felt uncomfortable with.’

She hadn’t expected him to come clean quite so easily and she found her expression relenting. If she was honest, she felt more than a little disappointed. Now she just felt guilty for prying, and guilty for wanting to know.

‘I’m sorry -’

But her words dried up. The sight of the shambling figure that had emerged from the woods sent a shiver down her spine and she raised a trembling finger. ‘He’s followed us!’

Raedwald and Sigbert dismounted and drew their swords, taking up defensive positions. The horned man stood in the middle of the path in silence. Deer antlers sprouted from his head – long and curved and sharp, and he was clothed in the most extraordinary garb; vines twined around his arms and legs, and his face was obscured partly by a crown of leaves. He was a most impressive spectacle.

‘Who is it?’ said Hillary. ‘Who’s followed us?’

Tobias looked on. The man seemed to be curiously familiar, although he couldn’t say why. And then a twinge of recognition sparked in his mind and he remembered the carvings of the green man in Ketton church. His appearance looked oddly similar, and he felt around in his pocket. The dictaphone was still there, but where was the camera? It occurred to him that he’d still not managed to capture any creature of worth on film or tape except, maybe, for the mournful call of the cockatrice.

‘The horned man! He’s come for us!’ warned Scarlet, nervously.

‘How do you know him?’ said Hillary, clearly surprised.

‘The last time I saw him was in the forest with the wolves, but I didn’t tell anyone…’

‘Would you care to tell me why?’

‘Because… I thought I’d dreamt it.’ she hissed.

‘What?’ said Hillary with incredulity.’A dream?’

‘Yes.’

Hillary turned to grab his staff. ‘People, especially you, should not take this place for granted! You are in the land of the Fey, and not a comfortable little village called Blakeby! Remember that!’

A wolf appeared from the trees but this time, even though it was massive, it didn’t seem threatening. The horned man gestured to his right and a rustle in the undergrowth revealed another wolf – smaller this time, but no less impressive. Another wolf betrayed its position nearby, followed by another and another.

‘Dire Wolves.’ said Sigbert.

‘And outnumbered.’ added Raedwald, visibly counting the numbers hiding in the trees.

Tobias groaned. ‘For god’s sake, not again…’

Wendle’s fur stood on end, but he looked bigger, more threatening than before, as if the last confrontation with the wolves had strengthened him somehow. Scarlet reached over and flung her arms around him. The last thing she wanted was to see him attacked again, and she clung on as if her life depended on it.

‘Who are you?’ Raedwald called to the horned man. He rapped his sword against his shield a few times and stood his ground. ‘Approach no further though if you value your life.’

The horned man stopped to consider the words.

‘Alas,’ he shrugged and continued walking towards them, ‘I value it not one jot….’

Raedwald looked back towards Hillary and prodded his helmet with a finger of his gauntleted hand. ‘Mad.’ he said. ‘Mad I tell you.’

Even so, Hillary was intrigued and waved Raedwald back, allowing the horned man to continue towards them.

‘And so, this is the man who forgot me?’ asked the horned man.

‘Who are you?’ asked Hillary.

The horned man seemed to be taken aback at the question. ‘Have you forgotten? Has it been that long?’

The stranger’s voice was familiar, but Hillary realised that putting a face to the voice was going to prove rather more difficult, and it annoyed him immensely.

‘I, on the other hand, knew who you were the moment you set foot in the forest of Tannith.’ said the horned man.

Hillary frowned. Clearly something wasn’t right here. ‘I’m sorry, do you know me?’

The horned man stopped, and reaching up with both hands, gently removed the stag-horned helmet that he wore. ‘You could say that,’ he said.

Sunlight caught the man’s face and he smiled. ‘You are Hillary. Hillary Bellock from Blakeby in the Vale of Bracken, watcher of the Fire Drake of Bracken Wood, keeper of the sacred barrow and one of the last true alchemists still alive.’

Hillary looked nonplussed.

‘But how could you possibly know that?’

‘Have you forgotten what happened all those centuries ago on the Wyrmgate?’

It was then that Hillary finally realised who it was who stood before him, and he dropped to his knees. ‘Fox Tufford?’ The name tumbled out of his mouth in a mumble almost. ‘But that’s impossible. It can’t be…’

‘Oh I can assure you it is.’ said Fox. ‘For years it was as if I had been in a dream that I couldn’t wake from. But it’s all coming back to me now. The fog that blinded me for so long has finally lifted.’

Fox scraped his long hair back, and Hillary knew that he was, indeed, who he claimed to be. He looked a little older maybe, but nowhere near as aged as Hillary. Six hundred years in Faerie did strange things to people.

‘Why did you leave me?’ asked Fox, suddenly very serious.
Hillary was momentarily lost for a reply.

‘But I saw you die…’ he said, eventually. ‘I saw it with my own eyes. You died. I killed you.’

The horned man lifted up his gown and vestment and Hillary noticed the angry scar that marked his lower torso – the mark of the injury that he, himself had inflicted. It was something that he thought he would never see again.

‘Do you have any idea of the guilt that I felt knowing that?’
‘Didn’t you know it was me?’ said Fox. ‘When I jumped up didn’t you sense it? The witch was playing us against each other and we both lost.’

‘But I saw you fall into the sea!’ protested Hillary.

‘Yes, yes, yes! But that wasn’t the end. Far from it.’

Hillary looked confused.

‘I’d survived everything; the witch, the sword, the fall and the sea. I dragged myself into the caves below Talistay where I recovered enough to carry on. But the witch’s magic was strong, and I stayed in the form of a wolf, until after years of hiding, I found myself in the forest of Weir, near Aldspell. A blacksmith who lived there would leave scraps of food for me every now and again. Eventually the spell’s magic started to wear off and one day I awoke in the forest as a man. I learned to hate the wolves at first, and I started hunting them. Offering my services to anyone who would pay me.’

‘A hunter of wolves?’ said Hillary. He pointed to the entourage of wolves behind him. ‘What are you doing with those then?’

‘My feelings changed with the passage of time. The blacksmith was more than just a man you see.’ Fox laughed briefly as he realised the ridiculousness of the words he’d just uttered. ‘I know how strange that sounds to you, but that is what he claimed, and I had no reason to disbelieve him, for there are many things in this world that defy normal understanding. His name may have been forgotten, but he claimed to have lived by himself in his smithy in the woods where he’d been since the dawning of the world. To people who chanced upon him, he would bestow gifts upon the worthy.’

‘Gifts? What sort of gifts?’

‘I must admit, he did have a sense for the ironic, for he bestowed on me the gift of mastery over animals. Wolves in particular.’

Hillary raised an eyebrow. ‘I see.’

‘But that wasn’t the end of our little story Hillary.’ Fox went on. ‘This wolf you see here…’ he said, running a hand over its thick fur, ‘…you’ve seen it before.’ He nodded to Raedwald and Sigbert. ‘Your mercenaries killed it once, but I brought it back to life.’

Hillary took a step back. He could sense that perhaps events were taking a turn for the worse.

‘You probably know, but Cordelia is still alive also. She took the wyrdstone and with it raised an army of Thornfolk. But the power of the stone drove her insane and she assumed – wrongly – that her sisters were going to betray her, and so she had them all murdered. All, except one it seemed.’

The wolf smiled with a mouth full of sharpness and light.

‘This is Meriadny,’ said Fox.

Wendle growled more fiercely than ever. But relented when Hillary patted him as if to calm him down. ‘There, there boy.’ he murmured. ‘No fear.’

‘Do not be alarmed.’ the wolf said, with a woman’s voice. ‘I wish you no harm. Once upon a time I would not have hesitated in ripping your throat out and eating your heart.’ She licked her lips. ‘But those times are long passed. There are things that are more important to us than that.’

Hillary nodded towards her warily, before Fox continued.

‘A dark aelf captain called Mirkatar and his two brothers Okkatar and Nurmurtar were enlisted to slay Cordelia’s sisters.’ revealed Fox. ‘But Meriadny escaped. Fearing for their life if they returned empty handed, the aelfs trapped the biggest wolf they could and slaughtered it, before traveling back to Tarasleiven with the wolf head as proof that they’d killed her.’

‘And there our story ends?’

‘Or begins. For it seems that Cordelia has been plotting her return to power for centuries Hillary. She has armies poised for war. Nowhere is safe anymore.’

‘I’m afraid we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. We can’t return to Blakeby. At least not until we reunite the wyrdstone fragments. By doing that, we might have a chance to reverse the damage that has happened. Our only option is to carry on. We have a world to save.’

‘And you seriously think you have a chance of regaining them?’

‘That’s why we’re here.’

Fox nodded towards the plateau of Eltdown in the distance.

‘You’ll not get the High Aelfs to help you if that’s what you think.’ said Fox. ‘They have withdrawn from the prying eyes of man.’

‘If that is the case, then I hope to change their minds.’

‘Cordelia has grown terribly strong, Hillary. Maybe too strong for us. She has razed whole towns to the ground in the far north looking for the last piece. I must warn you that she probably knows most of what happens in these lands.’

‘That is why we must get help. If not, earth with be lost to the cold, forever.’

‘Why, what has happened there?’

‘Oh, that is a long story indeed…’

Posted in A Change In The Weather |