Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Read online

  “Do you actually mean this woods? This was the Forest Primeval? Razzorbauch didn't have nearly enough power to make such a change, the last I knew.”

  “Then as hit thinks me, sitting over here you will need to be before to you the rest of hit I can for to tell,” said Meri as he sat on a nearby fallen tree and gave the trunk beside him a pat.

  “Well these blue and yellow creatures,” said Razzmorten, taking his seat, “they shot me with a dart and brought me in here unconscious, or I wouldn't be here at all...”

  “Dorchadas, my good man, one of your dear brother's enchantments they be, along with smallies and other such things.”

  “Dorchadas? Are they indeed what they look like? Could they possibly be the giant lyoths from the Dark Continent?

  “All but the great daggers for fangs they did have as cats.”

  “Razzorbauch never had this kind of power. Are you sure Demonica had nothing to do with this?”

  “Oh, but the power he now does have,” said Meri, “particularly since he not only to get his hands on the First Wizard's Great Staff was able, but indeed on the very crystal Heart of the Great Stone Tree, which the First Wizard with the Staff did use.”

  “So that's where the Heart came from,” said Razzmorten as he stroked his beard. “And in the process, he's kidnapped the Guardians?”

  “Nacea, Alvita and Celeste, who was my very lover,” said Meri, looking very haunted.

  “So you think he's brought them here into the part of the woods which he's changed?”

  “I am sorry, but you do not quite see. Hit not just be this part of the woods. He has the whole Forest a-changed. And I must my lover for to find.”

  “Oh my!” said Razzmorten. A breeze chased through the leaves up in the canopy, though not a breath stirred down where they were sitting. A great grey owl wailed, far, far away through the trees, though this time, he was not entirely convinced that it was an owl at all. “I swear I'd help you if I could,” but I'm in a desperate struggle to come up with a cure for the plague which is loose in Niarg and Far.”

  “Alack!” said Meri.

  “I was cutting Elven hyssop by the southernmost part of the Gulf of Orrin when I was taken by the Dorchadas. Do you know where that would be from here?”

  “I do,” said Meri, springing to his feet, “and I would delighted to see ye there be, if you do not mind me for to have along.”

  “Why, I'd be honored,” said Razzmorten as he rose and followed him at a brisk pace through the musty leaves. “Now, you've mentioned Celeste, Alvita and Nacea. Wasn't there also supposed to be a Rodon amongst the Guardians?”

  “Their brother...”

  “Wasn't he one of the Guardians?”

  “Yep, save there be a good chance the smallies got him...”

  “Smallies?”

  “Oh yea. Of them I did mention. More of your brother's work. Bright red nightmares that in the woods in swarms do run...”

  ***

  Minuet had had quite enough of Ugleeuh by supper time. It had taken much of the afternoon to repair her hoop and get her embroidery mounted again to her satisfaction. Even so, she politely dipped out a bowl of Bethan's stew for her and quietly sat across from her at the board to eat.

  Ugleeuh sipped her stew without a word, stirring it from time to time and glancing up as though she were trying to think of something to say. “Did you hear that hideous loud singing the hired hands were doing, today?” she said at last.

  “I suppose. I don't know about 'hideous.' I wasn't paying attention...”

  “Well it was hideous, just plain more than anyone should ever have to listen to.”

  “That bad, aye?” said Minuet, finally looking up. “So who was this rotten songster, Enid, Nudd, Yvain or old Mister Philpot?”

  “Who cares who they are,” said Ugleeuh, grabbing up a napkin as she smiled around a dribbling piece of lamb.

  “Philpot wasn't ugly until you scorched him with your weather...”

  “Not him,” she said, hiding a giggle as she blotted her chin. “No, no. The really ugly blotchy one. You know, the one with a face like some kind of red squash, the one with the awful orange hair...”

  “Orange? Two of the field hands have red hair, Lee-Lee, and if you mean the freckled one, he might be ordinary, but he's not one bit ugly.”

  “Well his hair is orange, but maybe not ugly to you because of your red hair.”

  Minuet squinted at her and waited.

  “Well anyway, we're done with his stupid singing. I was out picking a bouquet for you... All right. I'll bring you one sometime. I was out picking flowers, and I hear this hollering and carrying on, and the fool had run his own foot clean through with his very own pitchfork,” she said, stifling her laughter with a snort. “What an idiot...”

  “You caused it, didn't you?”

  “How could you say that to me, Min-Min?”

  “Easy. You're having 'way too much fun with this. You're not even hiding it. Were you at least good enough to heal his wound for him?”

  “Heal Him?”

  “Yea. They'll have to hold him down and run a red-hot wire through his foot if you didn't...”

  “Of course I didn't heal him,” she said, growing louder as she stood up to tramp across the floor. “He got what he deserved, passing himself off to the old man as skilled help. I dismissed him on the spot. I did us all a favor. If the world was fair, you and

  Father would owe me!” And with that, she slammed the door.

  Chapter 5

  “Will you be coming to bed soon, Neron?” said the silver haired Elf in her nightgown as she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders from behind his chair. Shadows leaped and waved up the walls from the faint breeze stirring the candle amongst the papers on a table nearby, as cricket frogs called through the window from the edge of Lake Jutland, like a chorus of marbles endlessly stirring on a glass table top.

  Neron reached up and squeezed her hand. “Your hand's hot, Nessa,” he said, turning at once to peer up at her face. “I was just going over some more of these papers Faragher's been shoving at me. I didn't want to keep you awake again. Anyway, I think I can sleep tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yea. I've made up my mind.”

  “And?”

  “And I've always thought you were queen.”

  “Oh quit playing. What are you going to tell Faragher?”

  “You're shaking. Are you chilled or what?”

  “What are you going to tell Faragher?”

  “Well, he's over a thousand years old, and if he's determined for to turn the crown over to me and make me ri, I suppose it's my go. And besides, you've always been my rion,” he said as he stood up without warning and scooped her up off her feet.

  “Put me down, king,” she said, kissing him on the neck.

  “Your face is hot,” he said, tramping away to the stairway. “And you are... You are indeed shaking like a leaf.” He charged up the stairs, down the hall and laid her on the bed. “There's not an ember in here. I'll be right back.” He dashed back downstairs, grabbed his burning candle and flew back to their apartment, lighting every candle in the room. “Now let me have a good look at you.” He brushed aside her hair, kissed her forehead and looked at her carefully. As he moved out of the light to better see, a scald of white-hot dread surged through him at the sight of a great purple splotch down the side of her neck to her collar bone.

  “What are you doing, King?”

  “Just...don't worry, I'll be right back,” he said, white lipped even in the candlelight. He gave her a light pat and vanished into the hallway. He flew down the stairs, ran down the echoing hallway and out into the moonlit garden, crunching gravel with each furious footfall. In short order he was amongst the houses of Oilean Gairdin, running frantically over the cobblestones splashed with rainbow hues from the crystal windows of the houses, until he grabbed onto a knocker at an oak door in the shadows.

  “Prince Neron!” cried the little woman with a c
andlestick who pulled open the door. “What's happened?”

  “Nessa!” he gasped, heaving for breath.

  “Is she hurt?”

  “Bad fever...” he panted, steadying himself against the doorway.

  “Daithi!” she hollered, turning aside. “It's Prince Neron! Princess Nessa has a bad fever!”

  “Queen Nessa,” he said with a pant that could have been a sob.

  “Come on!” cried Daithi as he burst out the door with his breeches under his nightshirt and his bag in his hand. “Let's run!”

  At Nessa's bedside, Daithi made Neron stay back while he gently laid back her collar with a short stick to peer at the purple spot on her neck. He motioned for Neron to step out of the room and followed on his heels. “I am horribly sorry sir,” he said, shaking his head. “She's got the plague and no mistake...”

  “Oh Fates!”

  “And it's worse than that. The purple spot means she's got the hepatic kind, and there's absolutely no recovery from that, sir.”

  Neron lunged for the door and Daithi stepped in front of him, shaking his head..

  “Please,” said Neron, “let me through.”

  “If you go in there, you'll die too.”

  “She's my everything. If she leaves this world, I'm going with her.”

  Daithi bowed his head and stepped aside.

  Neron stepped inside to find that some of the candles had burnt down and gone out. He rushed quietly to their bed, taking up Nessa's dainty hand as he gently brushed aside her hair. “Oh Fates!” he thought. “She's burning up.”

  “What?” she said slowly, opening her heavy fevered eyes.

  “I'm here, sweetheart. I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep. You need your rest.”

  Nessa smiled and squeezed his hand.

  He pressed her hand against his cheek and closed his eyes.

  “No,” she said in a faint voice. “I don't want to sleep.”

  “But you must, dear. You're very ill and you need your strength.”

  “My wonderful husband. I want to spend every last moment of my life with you. I'll sleep soon enough.”

  Her words washed through him in an unexpected wave of fright, and he had to catch his breath for a moment before he could speak. “And I want to spend every last moment of mine with you too, love,” he said. “but please, please don't give up yet. There's still a chance. I want to find Razzmorten. His magic is stronger than anyone's, but I need you to rest and do everything in your power to hang on while I find him. Will you do that for me?”

  “I'll do anything for you, Neron. So I will try, but I don't want to sleep. I want to be with you. Please lie down and hold me. If I go to sleep in your arms, you can slip away and send for Razzmorten.”

  Neron climbed into bed at once and took her tenderly into his arms. “How's this?” he said, astonished at how positively soaked with sweat her gown and bedclothes had become. “Better?”

  “Perfect, my king,” she said as a chill ran through her. After a time, her shuddering subsided enough for her to pass into a deep sleep as she made Neron's neck hot with her snoring. A candle by the water pitcher burnt down into a broth of itself, sputtered and winked out. He lay there wanting to hold her forever as the urge to find Razzmorten grew on him. With a great lump in his throat, he eased out of bed, picked up his shoes and stepped into the hallway to find Daithi, sitting in a chair just outside the door.

  “Did I give you a start?” said Daithi as he stood and backed away from Neron. “I reckoned I should stay. Nessa hasn't...?” He looked very uncomfortable.

  “No, no. She's asleep. I'm going to send one of our sons to fetch Wizard Razzmorten. He has very strong magic.”

  “I've heard that, but you'll expose people, now that you've been at her bedside.”

  “She went to sleep in my arms.”

  “Exactly. You'll expose people. You'll expose your son.”

  “How?”

  “I don't know how. People who get too close to the sick get sick. Something goes from the sick to the well, and it's not magic, it's not a spell...”

  “What then?”

  “I don't know. Nobody knows. But it's real and you could spread the plague to the entire kingdom.”

  “I can't just watch her die!” he said with a sob that he immediately wrenched away from himself. “Don't you get that if there be the tiniest chance that I can save her, I have no choice? How could I not try? Besides, a lot of people have already been near Nessa this evening. We had supper with the king and queen and our families in the dining hall, downstairs.”

  Daithi sat back down and covered his face with his hands. “Then, by all means, send for Wizard Razzmorten,” he said. “And let's pray that he can do something unheard of. I'll stay here with Nessa until you return. But when you return, we must decide who has been exposed and how to separate the sick from the well.”

  He was already running down the hall. He didn't have far to go. His eldest son Orry lived in a house at the corner of the palace.

  Orry was the one who pulled open the door to Neron's frantic knocking. At the look on his father's face he stepped outside at once into the calls of the cricket frogs and pulled the door closed behind him. “What on earth?”

  “Nessa's got the plague.”

  “Surely not! It's been two hundred years...”

  “I've seen enough of it. I remember it clearly. She's dying.”

  “Ochon!” he cried. “Can you be absolutely sure?”

  “Daithi's seen her. He's even alarmed that I might be out exposing people. She has an awful fever. And when I saw the big purple blotch on her neck, I knew.”

  “We all ate supper with her,” said Orry, running his hands through his hair as he sat down heavily upon the step. He looked up. “Are you sure she's dying?”

  “I just have a hunch about Wizard Razzmorten's magic...”

  “But he couldn't have been anything but a child when the First Wizard...”

  “It's just a hunch.”

  “You're wanting me to go fetch him?”

  “I want you to alert everyone in the family, everyone who was at supper. And have them keep it secret. They shouldn't be around anyone. I'm the generation with the taisteal gift. I can probably find Razzmorten with it and be back here in an hour or so.” He studied Orry's face for a moment. “Look. We have to believe that we can get through this. All of Oilean Gairdin will be looking to us for hope.”

  “Well yes, but you almost make it sound like it's our job and not Uncle Faragher's. He's king, after all.”

  “He's turning the Crown over to me,” he said as a nearby bullfrog joined the cricket frogs. “Please, not now. Just do this while I'm gone.” And with that, he turned aside and vanished into the air.

  ***

  “Trafferth!” muttered old white haired Peredur as he yanked tight the sash of his robe. “I'm doing ye a favor here, unless ye want to be scared clean away from the door.” He glanced in the direction of the knocking as he stooped to pick up a flame on the wick of his candle before stumping the length of the house to the door. “Dod i mewn, dod i mewn,” he said, fumbling to lift the latch with an empty sconce in one hand and a dribbling candle in the other. He threw open the door and looked the stranger up and down.

  “Gabhaim pardun agat...” said Neron.

  “Prince Neron!” said Peredur with a wide eyed gasp as he twisted the candle into the sconce at last. “Do come in! My word, I'm hardly dressed fit for a prince.”

  “I'm so very sorry to be bothering you in the middle of the night...”

  Peredur was already shaking his head. “Razzmorten's not here,” he said. “It's something terrible, isn't it?”

  Neron gave a nod.

  “I simply don't know where he is, Your Highness. He's like that sometimes, and I never know what to do. But I can certainly wake Mistress Dewin for you...”

  “Forgive me, but please do.”

  Peredur's eyes got very wide at this. He thrust his sconce into Neron's
hands and vanished into the blackness of the house, leaving a trail of hurried footfalls. He crept past Ugleeuh's room and knocked softly on Minuet's door. The door came open immediately, causing him to gasp and step backward.

  “ Peredur!” said Minuet. “I thought you were Leeuh.”

  “I suppose my tiptoeing woke you. I'm sorry. Prince Neron is down at the door. Something awful has happened and he wanted to see your father. I told him you'd speak with him.”

  “Very well. Thank you. Just go on back to bed. I'll take care of it.” Minuet found Neron still dutifully holding the flickering candle. She curtsied and relieved him of it as she lit every candle in the room with a wave of her hand and saw that his face looked haunted. “The plague?” she thought. “You're trying to find Father?” she said.

  “Desperately, I'm afraid. My wife may be dying.”

  “That's terrible! I don't know where he is.”

  Neron's eyes fell shut for a moment.

  “Is she ill, injured?”

  “I'm very sorry,” said Neron, getting hold of himself. “It would be irresponsible of me to disclose that. Please. It's just that...”

  “Is it the plague?”

  “Oh Fates, yes!” he said, squeezing shut his eyes with a silent sob.

  “Forgive me Prince Neron,” she said. “I've not quite told you the truth. Please excuse me. I'll be right back.” She turned at once and vanished into the hallway.

  By the time he had found a chair and had taken a weary seat, she was back. “This,” she said as she handed him her vial and pipette, “is oil of oregano. Put six drops under her tongue, six times a day.”

  “This is the very cure?” he cried, springing to his feet.

  “Yes it is. Does she have buboes?”

  “My dear sweet child,” said Neron as he reached out, intending to give her a firm hug. “Thank the very Fates for you! Oh!” he said, stopping short and stepping back away from her. “I mustn't expose you. No. She has the hepatic kind.”

  “Good. Then that will give you more oil for under her tongue. Make sure she takes every last drop of it. And again, I'm sorry for my not telling you the truth. Father gave me strict orders that no one was to know his whereabouts. He's getting a hay load of oregano plants along the south shore of the Gulf of Orrin. I'll tell him that I told you, but please tell no one else.”