Wit'ch Fire: Book One of The Banned and the Banished

  Fardale raced to him and sniffed at his boot.

  “Don’t leave,” Mogweed moaned.

  Fardale raised his eyes to meet Mogweed’s. Two wolves, back to back, protecting.

  A scream echoed from behind them and was answered by another wail, closer still.

  “What are we to do?”

  A pack chasing a deer over a cliff. A flight of ducks taking to wing.

  “What?” Fardale made no sense. Had his brother already been in this wolf shape too long? Was the wildness of the wolf overtaking his si’lura soul? Mogweed winced with pain, his shoulders hunched up in trepidation. “You send gibberish!”

  A she-wolf leads a litter. Fardale twisted away and started to climb out of the shallow creek bed. He glanced behind to Mogweed.

  Mogweed pushed up onto one leg, using just the toe of his other boot for balance. He snatched a handful of Fardale’s tail. Between his hopping and Fardale’s yanking, he scrambled out of the creek bed. But it took time, and Mogweed’s lips were pulled thin with pain. Once up, he collapsed against the trunk of a pine, gasping. “Maybe we should stay put,” he said. “Climb a tree. Wait for the hunters. In these forms, they may not know us as si’lura.”

  Fardale’s eyes narrowed. The eye of an owl. Flesh torn from bone.

  Mogweed groaned. But, of course, Fardale was right. These were forest men of the Western Reaches, not so easily tricked. Their only hope lay in avoiding men until they crossed the Teeth. It had been hundreds of winters since their people had ventured out of the forests and into the eastern lands. With luck, men on the far side of the Teeth would have forgotten the si’lura.

  A scream echoed up from the lower washes of the creek bed.

  Racing legs! The scent of the nearby pack. A mother’s teat near one’s nose.

  Mogweed shoved off the tree. He hobbled beside his brother, one hand planted on Fardale’s shoulder for support. It was slow progress, but as his brother had hinted, they didn’t have far to go.

  Fardale helped Mogweed over a rise to where even the thorn bushes failed to grow. Beyond the rise, only granite and shale spread before them, weatherworn rock where once an ancient glacier had carved a path through this region. Steep hills of gray rock were etched with black crevices.

  The barren sight sucked hope from Mogweed’s chest. “No,” he whispered to the tumble of rock and shale. His brother was crazy! He stumbled back from the blighted area. “I would rather take my chances with the sniffers.” Mogweed turned eyes of disbelief toward Fardale.

  A fledgling caught in a tanglebriar, its young blood sucked through piercing thorns until it lay still. Behind lay certain death. A raging river beyond which the pack howled. As dangerous as it may seem, ahead lay a chance.

  Suddenly a wail erupted behind them, and now even the crashing of hunter’s boots could be heard. A voice called out, echoing up from the hidden creek bed. “Lookie here! See them tracks! Looks like them shape-shifters climbed out right here. C’mon, Blackie. Git at ’em!” The crack of a hand whip and the howl of the sniffers speared through the thin air. “Git them damn shifters!”

  Fardale’s eyes drilled into Mogweed, full of satisfaction. Fardale had been proven right. The keening frenzy of the sniffers had alerted the forest hunters to what scent had caught the beast’s attention: si’lura. Or in the foul, thick-tongued language of the humans—shape-shifters.

  A moan escaped Mogweed’s clenched teeth. Why had he ever left his forest home? He should have just stayed and tried to make the best of it. So what if he remained an outcast? He would at least have survived.

  But in his trembling heart, Mogweed knew the journey was necessary. The thought of being forever trapped in this one shape for all time scared him more than the howling sniffers or what might lie ahead.

  Balanced on one boot, weak words tumbled from Mogweed’s lips. “Go … let’s go.”

  With Fardale’s shoulders for support, Mogweed and his brother crossed the threshold of thorn bushes and entered the land of scarred rock, a land all those of the Western Reaches knew to avoid: the land of the og’res.

  16

  TOL’CHUK BALKED AT stepping farther into the chamber of the spirits. He stood silently with Fen’shwa’s body sprawled at his feet. The trio of ancient og’res slowly swung and marched with bent backs toward the distant tunnel. Words trailed back to him from the Triad. “Follow. This is your path now.”

  Tol’chuk had known he’d be punished for his assault on Fen’shwa. Og’re law was strict and often brutal. But this? He stared at the black eye in the far wall, the entrance to the path of the dead. He now regretted his choice in returning Fen’shwa’s body. He should have just fled into the wilds.

  The last of the skeletal old og’res crept within the far tunnel. A single word echoed to him. “Come.”

  Advancing into the chamber of the spirits, Tol’chuk straightened his back and pulled upright. He had dishonored his tribe and no longer deserved to appear as an og’re. The need for pretense had died with Fen’shwa. He stepped over the body of his tribe member and crossed the cavern. Torches of blue flame hissed at him. His many shadows writhed on the walls as he passed, like twisted demons mocking his gait.

  At the entrance to the tunnel, before his fright could drive him away howling, he bowed his head and pushed into the darkness. The scrape and shuffle of the ancient og’res led him farther into the bowels of their mountain home. No torches marked the walls here, and after rounding a bend in the tunnel, blackness swallowed him up. Only the scrape of claw on stone guided him forward.

  Down this stone throat, his dead father’s body had been swallowed, dragged by the Triad to the land of the spirits. Now, like his father, it was Tol’chuk’s punishment to travel this path. He was as dead as Fen’shwa to his people.

  What lay at the tunnel’s end was known only to the Triad. For as far back as Tol’chuk could remember, the members of the Triad had never changed. He had once asked his father what happened if any of the Triad died. His father had boxed him aside and mumbled that he didn’t know since no member of the Triad had died during his lifetime.

  Tol’chuk knew little else about the three elders. To speak of them was frowned upon. Like mentioning the name of the dead, it was considered sour luck. Still, the Triad were a constant in the life of the tribe. Old and crookbacked, the three og’res guarded the spiritual well-being of his people.

  Only they and the dead knew what lay at the end of this black tunnel.

  Tol’chuk’s feet began to slow as dread clutched his heart. His breathing rasped from his constricted throat, and a pain began to gnaw at his side. He crept more slowly down the twisting course as the air grew warm and dank. A whispering odor of salt and crusted mold penetrated his wide nostrils.

  As he continued, the tunnel closed more tightly around him, as if trying to grab him and hold him from retreating. His head scraped the stone of the ceiling. Its touch sent shivers through his skin. He bowed his head away from the roof. The tunnel continued to lower as he wound into the depths of the mountain’s heart. Finally, Tol’chuk was forced to hunker down and use the knuckles of his hand for support, returning again to an og’re’s shuffling gait.

  Tol’chuk’s knuckles were scraped and raw from crawling by the time a greenish light began glowing from the tunnel ahead. As he dragged himself forward, the light grew. He squinted in the light after so long in darkness.

  The end of the tunnel must be near.

  Deeper down the tunnel, the path began to widen again, and the source of the glow became clear. The walls of the tunnel crawled with thousands of thumb-sized glowworms emanating a pale green glow the color of pond scum. The worms undulated and throbbed, some in bunches tangled like roots, some on solitary trails that left an incandescent slime.

  The mass of worms on the walls thickened and spread. As he continued, even the floor eventually churned with their grublike bodies. Dark splotches of crushed glowworms marked the footprints of the ancient og’res. Tol’chuk followed, trying
to place his feet in the same steps as the others. Squashing the worms with his bare feet disgusted him. The sight of the writhing bodies made his stomach tighten.

  With his attention on the worms, he was well into a large cavern before he was even aware of leaving the tunnel. Only the guttural intoning of the Triad drew his attention. The three og’res were huddled in a group, facing each other with heads bowed.

  His eyes glanced beyond the Triad, and beheld a towering arch of ruby heartstone. Tol’chuk fell to his knees. Heartstone was a jewel that the mountain seldom released to the miners. The last heartstone discovered, a sliver of jewel no larger than a sparrow’s eye, had caused such a stir among the og’res that a tribal war had begun for its possession. That war had killed his father.

  The towering span dwarfed the three og’res huddled before it. Tol’chuk gawked at the bulk of heartstone, his neck straining back to see the distant peak of the arch.

  Carved into countless facets, the surface reflected back the worm glow into countless colors, hues so stunning that his rough tongue had no way of describing them. He stood, basking in the light.

  Where before the oozing sheen of the glowworms had sickened him, the reflected light now stirred something deep in his chest, penetrating even to the red core of his bones, and for the first time in his life, Tol’chuk felt whole. He sensed his spirit in every speck of his body. The bathing glow, like a cascading waterfall, washed clean the shame he felt in his body. He found his back straightening more fully than he had ever allowed it. Muscles knotted since he was young unclenched. He found his arms raising as he stretched his back up.

  He was not a half-breed, not a fractured spirit. He was whole!

  Tears coursed down his face as he sensed his complete spirit and the beauty his skin and bone hid. He breathed the radiant air deeply, drawing the reflected glow into him. He never wanted to move from where he stood. Here he could die.

  Let the Triad cut my throat, he thought. Let my lifeblood sweep the worms from around my feet. Bone and muscle were just a cage, while his spirit buried within could not be sundered by ax or dagger. It was whole and always would be!

  He wanted nothing more of life than this moment, but others intruded.

  “Tol’chuk.”

  His name only skittered at the edge of his awareness, but like a pebble dropped into a still pool, the word rippled away his sense of well-being.

  His name was repeated. “Tol’chuk.”

  His neck twisted in the direction of the voice. As he moved, his tran-quility shattered. He shook his head, searching for what he had lost. But it failed to return. The heartstone arch continued to spark and glint, but nothing more.

  Tol’chuk’s back began to bow, muscles knotting, as he discovered the three pairs of eyes studying him.

  “Now it starts.” The Triad’s voice was more a moan than words.

  Tol’chuk bowed his head. His heart thundered in fear.

  One of the Triad crossed to him. He felt his wrist gripped by the bony paw of the og’re. Tol’chuk’s hand was raised, and something cool and hard was placed in his palm. The og’re backed away.

  “See,” the Triad commanded. Again the word seemed to come from all three, like a hiss of wind between narrow cliffs.

  Tol’chuk glanced to what lay heavy on his palm. It was a chunk of heart-stone the size of a goat’s head. “What … what is this?” His own voice sounded so loud in the chamber that Tol’chuk bowed his head from the noise.

  The answer swirled from the clustered og’res. “It is the Heart of the Og’res, the spirit of our people given form.”

  Tol’chuk’s trembling hand almost dropped the stone. He had heard whispers of this rock. A heartstone that conveyed the spirits of the og’res to the next land. He held the rock out toward the Triad, straining for them to take it away.

  “Stare.” Their eyes seemed to glow in the worm light. “Stare deep within the rock.”

  Swallowing to wet his scratchy throat, he raised the stone toward his eyes. Though it glinted a thick red hue, it failed to spark and shine the way the arch did. He stared at the rock and failed to see anything of consequence. Confused, he began to lower the stone.

  “Search beneath its surface,” their voices hissed again.

  Tol’chuk clenched his face and narrowed his eyes. He concentrated on the heartstone. Though of exceptional size, it seemed an ordinary jewel. What did they want of him? If they wanted him dead, why fool with this? Just as his eyes started to turn away again, he spotted it. A flaw in the core of the rock. A black blemish buried deep within the jeweled facets. “What is—?” Suddenly the flaw moved! At first he thought he had shifted the stone himself. But as he watched, he saw the dark mass buried deep in the stone spasm once again. Frozen with fear, this time he knew he had not moved.

  He squinted and held the rock higher to the light. He now saw what the layers of jewel tried to hide. Deep in the rock was a worm. It could be a cousin of the wigglers coating the cavern walls, but this one was as black as the flaming oil found in pools deep under the mountain. What was this creature?

  As if the Triad had read his thoughts, an answer was given. “It is the Bane. It feasts on the spirits of our dead as they enter the sacred stone.”

  Three arms pointed to the Heart. “That is the true end to the path of the dead—in the belly of a worm.”

  Tol’chuk’s lips grimaced to expose his short fangs. How could this be? He had been taught that the og’re dead, assisted by the Triad, passed through the stone to a new world and life. He hefted the stone with its black heart. He had been taught a lie! This is where it all ended. “I don’t understand.”

  The Triad continued. “An og’re, many lifetimes ago, betrayed an oath to the land’s spirit. For this betrayal, we were cursed by the Bane.”

  Tol’chuk lowered the heartstone and hung his head. “Why tell me all this?”

  The Triad remained silent.

  A deep rumble shook the mountain roots, thunder from the distant top of the peak, what the og’res called “the mountain’s voice.” The threatening winter storm had finally struck.

  As the echo died away, the Triad’s words flowed again. “You are magra, of proper age. Even the mountain calls for you.”

  He raised his eyes toward the ancient og’res. “Why me?”

  “You are og’re and not og’re. Spirits of two peoples mix in you.”

  “I know,” Tol’chuk said. “A half-breed. Og’re and human.”

  The trio of og’res swung their eyes toward one another, quietly conferring. Tol’chuk’s ears strained toward them. Vague whisperings escaped their huddled mass, lone words and scattered phrases: “… lies … he knows not … the book of blood … crystal fangs …” A final phrase slipped to his ear: “… the stone will kill the wit’ch.”

  Tol’chuk waited, but no other words reached him. His heart thundered in his chest. He could not stand silent. “What do you want of me?” His words boomed in the quiet cavern.

  The trio turned three sets of eyes on him, then their answer flowed to him: “Free our spirits. Kill the Bane.”

  MOGWEED AND FARDALE huddled under an outcropping of rock. The shelf of stone offered little shelter, but the late afternoon storm had struck so suddenly and savagely that no other refuge could be found in these barren lands of the og’res.

  Arms of lightning grabbed the mountain peak and shook the rock. Booming thunder crushed them both deeper under the stone roof. Whistling winds swept down from the heights, driving a hard rain.

  After the hunters had balked at following them into the og’re land, Mogweed had assumed that the only risk of death lay in a chance meeting with one of the hulking denizens of these barren peaks.

  He had not thought to worry about the weather.

  Tiny freezing drops stung Mogweed’s exposed skin like the bite of wasps. “We must seek a better shelter,” Mogweed said as Fardale shook his thick coat. “We’ll freeze to death by nightfall.”

  Fardale kept his back
to Mogweed, staring out into the rainswept gullies and cliffs. He seemed oblivious to the cold rain sluicing down from the cloud-choked skies. Like the feathers of a goose, his fur simply shed the rain, while Mogweed’s clothes absorbed the dampness and held its cold touch firm to his skin.

  Mogweed’s teeth chattered, and his swollen ankle throbbed in his soggy boot. “We need at least a fire,” he said.

  Fardale turned his eyes to Mogweed, their amber glow more cold than warm. An image coalesced, a warning: An eagle’s eye spies the wagging tail of a foolish squirrel.

  Mogweed pulled farther under the rocky overhang. “Do you really think the og’res would spy our fire? Surely this storm has driven them deep within their caves.”

  Fardale scanned the rocky terrain silently.

  Mogweed did not press his brother. The cold was much less a threat than a band of og’res. Mogweed slipped his bag from his shoulder and plopped it on the floor of their shelter. He crouched down in an alcove farthest from the wind and the rain and hugged his knees to his chest, trying to offer the smallest target to the bitter gusts. For the thousandth time this day, he wished for even an iota of his former skills.

  If only I could change into a bear form, he thought, then this rain and cold would be nothing but an inconvenience. He stared at his brother’s shaggy figure and grimaced. Fardale had always been the luckier of the twin brothers. Life had smiled on him with even his first breath. Born first, Fardale had been declared heir to their family’s properties. To match this position, Fardale was gifted with the tongue of an orator, knowing the exact thing to say when it needed saying. Whispers of his potential to become elder’root of the tribe were soon bandied about. But Mogweed always seemed to say the wrong thing at the worst time and chafed his clansfolk with each movement of his tongue. Few sought his company or council.