Faormuc, J.B. Jones [which ebook reader txt] 📗

members of the Fey were never accorded the distinction of capitalizing the individual castes.  Equality in their society was the rule and no exceptions were granted. There were other castes amongst the Fey and the membership of the Commune changed on occasion.  When Spark last had reason to address them, one of the educators held the position that the liana now occupied.

 

A facilitator offered Spark fruit juice which she took, thanking him. "Commune, I have grave news to share."  She sipped at her juice, then announced, "A faormuc has manifested in the human lands."  Spark said no more.  She knew what came next.

 

"Hold, ember," said one of them.  "We will convene the entire Cadre here in one hour.  Facilitator, direct the educator, farmer, husbandry, and builder castes to assign a representative.  You will represent the facilitators."

 

"As you wish, Commune.  By your leave."  Before he could depart, Commune administrator told him, "Share nothing of this development, yet."  He nodded his understanding and departed to carry out the Commune's directive.

 

"Come, Spark," said Commune ember, "we have time to get you food and clean silks."  She took Spark's hand and led her away.

 

*****

Michaela, Colryn and Jonsai sat outside under the awning.  She had the scroll opened. Bits of sticky sap from one of the nearby trees held it that way on the table.  The cat grumbled and paced, wearing a path in the yard.

 

"Jon, look at this." He stood and came around behind her to see.  "I see this sigil that could be 'King' and if it is, I am certain that the one which follows must be 'Faust'.  And here, do you see this one that looks to be an overturned rook, from the game of Castles?  Could that be 'surrender'?"

 

   "I do believe you are correct, Kayla.  And these?" Jonsai pointed over Michaela's shoulder.  "See how they rise from smaller to taller in succession.  That could be 'season', could it not?"

 

"If you two are right, this scroll conveys an ultimatum."  Col drank from a mug of cider and watched the cat wear a furrow into the dirt. "We will take our luncheon with the men, Kayla. We will return, soon. This damned message will wait. Jon, will you join us?"  Michaela cleaned the sap from the corners of the scroll, rerolled it and tucked it into the bodice of her blouse.  The three set off toward the bunkhouse.  Giving wide berth to the auroch pen, the faormuc followed.

 

*****

That morning, as the sky began to pink ahead of the dawn, Marku coaxed another small fire from the coals and hung a pot of water for tea.  Before it boiled, the five embers sat across from him. 

 

"I have had to change my thoughts about harrassing the Faustians," he told them.  "At the first, it was not important to me if they suffered.  My one goal is to chase them home.  There is one among them, though, I would not choose to harm. And one I want to talk to."

 

As he spoke, he wove grasses and other vegetation into the coarse blanket.  When the water roiled, he added loose tea leaves to it, took the pot from the fire and let it steep. He looked at them and said, "I need a skunk."  Marku/Vul explained his plan to the embers as he poured some tea into a cup.  "I will gladly share, but have no other cups.  Any ideas?"

 

Two of the embers slipped into the forest.  After a short while they returned with five reeds and hands full of dripping moss.  They tossed the moss onto the fire where it steamed as it choked the flames.  When each had been given one of the reeds, they stood around the pot and sipped their fill. 

 

"There is a spring seep about ten of your paces in that direction," one said, pointing.  The Forest will not aid us if we leave it endangered," he continued, gesturing at the fire pit.  Marku pursed his lips and tilted his head in confusion. "The Forest lives, Vul. It may aid or hinder our plans, as it wills.  This is beyond your ken, but it is, nonetheless, the truth."

 

Marku went to fetch water. While on the way, it occurred to him that the ember that spoke to him had no problem forming the 'v' sound.  He laughed. He did not think Spark had a speech impediment.

 

The embers went to get a skunk.

 

*****

Shadows danced, spawned by the flicker of many dozens of candles of every description. From slim tapers to robust towers, from fat, squat types with multiple wicks to votives in small, colored glass or crystal containers, from candelabrae and one enormous chandelier suspended high above his head, wisps of smoke and the scents of melting beeswax and tallow wafted.  Their combined output of smoke and heat would have overpowered even the Great Hall of the castle above him, but that was not the case here in the lair of the warlock, Patarkos.

 

He sat, naked, in the massive chair centered in the chamber created by volcanic might some eons ago.  The room was so huge that the light beaming from the candles produced only pinprick reflections from its basalt and obsidian walls.  Patarkos looked at the spot where the small star, its own light near to overpowered by the candleshine, held sway in a far part of the cavern.  He smiled without mirth.  More decades past than the sorceror cared to contemplate, a Master Wizard, he croaked a laugh and tipped a flute of spring water in the star's direction, had shared what would be his final lesson with a young adept.

 

"Of all the paths, all the sources, of power, there is none more predominant than that of the earth itself, young Claude." 

 

How I despise that name!  The incensed warlock reached out to the constellation and a mud colored planet with its moon streaked from orbit to hover before him.  Claude.  We name you, Claude.  Though he had certainly been too young to remember the naming ceremony, the sorceror could envision the part his parents had played in his great and terrible mind's eye.  He trembled as he recalled the others, adepts with magnitudes less potential than he, teasing him, "Behold Clod, the mighty carrot-top hedge wizard."  Patarkos stripped more of the planets and moons from the solar system and flung them into the distance.  He could still hear laughter. 

 

Straining with the effort, Patarkos regained control of himself.  He poured the remainder of the water over the dirt colored planet and its satellite then batted them away.

 

I must locate that worthless child.  And even the gods will not protect him if he has failed me.

 

Patarkos fastened his attention onto a table that then slid across the stone floor toward him.  It halted beside the sturdy ironwood chair.  He took a rawhide thong from it and held it between chapped lips.  The warlock bunched his flame hued hair into a top knot that revealed the shaved clean sides of his knobby skull. He tied it with intricate windings of the leather.  From the table he took a container filled with a cloudy tincture and dipped his finger into it. He whispered the words of power as he anointed each temple.  From another bottle he poured flakes of silver into a bowl.  To that was added dye so black that it seemed to swallow the light around it.  Patarkos blended these and began to paint his body with the sigils of runes. They started at the bald sides of his head, continued over his gaunt face and did not end until they reached bony ankles.

 

The name he was christened with was not the warlock's sole insecurity.  It had been years unrecalled since he had last seen his reflection in a mirror glass.  He would cringe when he caught sight of his image by chance in a window or pool of still water.

 

He returned the table to its place with a gesture. Patarkos could feel the earth essence seep into him.  It started as a tingle that made the hair on his skinny arms and back of his neck stand erect. It would progress until he felt rooted by the fundamental gravity of the planet beneath his feet. 

 

It was this chamber that brought Patarkos to Faust.  He had been drawn to this area by the emanations of strength and power. He believed, at first, that it was the considerable power of the Selena woodlands. His discovery of this cavern beneath Faust's castle seemed preordained. Wasting no time, he sought Faustian employ. Patarkos had no love for Turgenev - nor any other. He saw the slovenly monarch as nothing more than a means to an end.  Only on the rarest of occasions did the wizard associate with him, at all. 

 

The warlock dressed.  Not for him the feminine robes of the charlatan hedge wizards or the arrogant clerics that pretended piety while fleecing their gullible flocks.  Patarkos was a warlock and he garbed himself as a warrior ought.  He donned a supple leather tunic and breeches - and when I take Selena, it shall be auroch leather - overlain by fine-linked chainmail.  The wizard stepped into hobnailed boots and fastened a wide, boiled leather belt around his waist.  To it was attached a wicked obsidian dagger fashioned from stone taken from this same chamber.  He finished with a boiled leather helm topped with a chainmail coif. 

 

As the power infused him, Patarkos calmed.  He paced the floor with his hands folded behind him.  The wizard could not fathom what had occurred.  Why was Italo hidden from him?  The idiot was enchanted with the notion that his father would think him worthy of a mission.  He swallowed the warlock's lie with the eagerness of a suckling babe. He would not have abandoned the quest of his own accord. Could he be dead?

 

Patarkos did not know why the imbuements he had placed on the scroll, and hedging against chance, the decorative quirt, he had given Italo failed. As long as one or the other remained in the damned child's possession his location could be pinpointed.  The warlock supposed Italo could have died on the trail.  He had to know.

 

The sorceror pivoted in place, his breath extinguished all but the five towering candles in the giant room.  Patarkos had one other way to locate the missing whelp. It was time to summon occult assistance. There was no need for the pentagrams used by amateurish adepts or the fearful exorcists. His strength and the power to be had in this chamber consecrated the area around the bulky chair. For many paces in every direction, Patarkos was safe against the cunning vehemence of demon-kind.

 

Patarkos spoke the words of conjuration and the demon unfolded from the shadows.

 

*****

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pursuit

Reconvened in the Chamber, the Cadre of the Fey listened with rapt attention to Spark.  There were no interruptions during her report.  

 

"...and that is the whole of it," she concluded.  Spark drank juice to wet her parched throat and waited for the questions she knew to be forthcoming.  She did not have to wait long.

 

"This Vul you speak of, he is trustworthy?"

 

Spark replied, "Vul is human."  She shrugged and a slight grimace appeared on her face.  There were a few chuckles and Commune ember smiled at Spark. She