Excerpt: The Staffs of Power

ONE

I hit the ground and rolled quickly, not caring about dirtying my dress. Above me, I could hear a cat yowling with rage and fright, and risked a look up. Stalker, the smoke-cat who had accompanied us, was on the fallen tree where we had paused to climb over. He had made himself huge, as large as a mountain-lion, and had given me enough time to duck below the sword blow.
“To me!” I screamed, and Rhodri was running back, drawing his own sword, and the outlaws hesitated, not knowing for an instant whether to deal with me and the fearsome still-swelling cat, or the knight racing with drawn sword.
I skidded to a halt and heaved myself up, drawing the long knife I carried at my waist, as Stalker launched himself from the tree at one of our attackers. I screamed, because I was sure Stalker would be killed, but as the man struck, Stalker dissolved into a smudge of grey smoke and then reformed behind the man, clawing at him.
I raced at another, who gave back in fright. I was screaming like a fish-wife as I brandished the knife, but I had no intention of coming too close to such a brawny looking man.
There was a roar behind me, an inhuman roar, and a huge figure leaped at the man, and brought him down with a blow from a clenched fist, and Blade was amongst the outlaws, striking out with his spear, and they broke and ran.
We stood listening to them crashing away in the woods. I looked for Stalker and he was pursuing them, as huge as a grey bear, slinking and darting, and I shook my head and lowered my knife, aware my whole body was shaking with fright and reaction.
The tusker-man Blade sucked at his split knuckles, glaring around, as Rhodri came up to us, wiping blood from his blade.
“No one dead, precious lady,” he panted. “But a couple of them marked and will need their wounds looking to.”
We listened to the screaming yowls from the wood and Rhodri shook his head.
“I didn’t know he could shape-change.”
“Nor did I, not for certain. Rhodri, this is Blade.”
Rhodri sheathed his sword and bowed to Blade who stared warily back at him.
“She - the Holy One - she say to come,” he said in his rough garbled speech. “I dream the way here - far from the mountain.”
He glanced back up the track. We were below the spurs of the mountain ridges where his hidden valley was, away from the Castle of the Yesylt Knights, away from the hut where I had learned my woodland magic.
“We go in search,” I told Blade. “We look for staffs of power.”
“I come,” he grunted. “I am told to come.”
“And I am very grateful you came just then,” Rhodri said frankly. “Six of them, and a cunningly laid ambush here. I should have realised, when I saw the tree pulled across.”
He helped me scramble over the dead tree trunk, and I brushed a hand lightly over it to reassure myself they had not wantonly cut it down. It had been dead for a long time, the wood was riddled with insect life and fungus grew on the decayed bark in lurid orange globules.
We reached M’Lesna and my horse and Skippy lifted her head cautiously from her basket tied to the saddle.
“Very wise,” I said to her, stroking an ear.
“How long will Stalker pursue them?” Rhodri asked as he fetched out his water bottle to bathe Blade’s broken knuckles. The tusker-man let him do it, looking bemused, and I laid a small piece of rock-goat bandage on the torn skin.
“This is bad place,” Blade said. “They make it for themselves, to trap people.”
Rhodri nodded. “I wouldn’t have come this way, but they told us Master Joalt had passed this way, and we look to find him.”
“A man from the castle,” I amplified to Blade. “We want the staff he carries, to take to Bee.”
Blade’s face lit up. “Bee! The lovely child! Where is she?”
“She went home,” I told him. “We found her home, and she remembered who she was. But she needs the staffs.”
“I will help you. The Holy One told me so.”
I glanced at Rhodri, but his face gave me no clue as to what he was thinking. Even bound as we were by the loom thread, I was not picking up anything from him.
“Er - people may think you strange,” I said carefully to Blade. He frowned at me, then looked down at himself.
“I have more clothes. Better clothes. I fetch my pack.”
He loped off into the woods he had leaped out from and Rhodri came across.
“Is this wise, precious lady?” he asked in a low voice.
“Wise or not, I don’t think we can stop him,” I said ruefully. “The Holy One, I think, is Mistress Destev, and she is quite capable of reaching through the loom and touching one of her creatures.”
“Very well.”
Blade came back with a pack and two more spears, and looked expectantly from one to the other.
“We go?”
“We go,” Rhodri confirmed. “Let’s get off this trail, at least, and down near the roads.”
We set off, Blade darting off occasionally into the woods to check the outlaws had not returned and tracked us.
“This man - this staff - it is for Bee?” he asked.
“Yes. Master Joalt carries one of the magic staffs we need, and if we can find it, it will tell us where the next one is.”
Blade nodded. “Casting,” he said. “We do it with animal bones. But the magic man lives in the high castle?”
“Yes, but he’s come down with another man, Kasade, who was once a mage. Kasade is going home.”
Blade did not ask any more. I didn’t know how he thought, or whether he understood our task, but it would be useful to have a third person with us, and a very strong and cunning third person who knew tracking and hunting.
I looked ahead, and I could see the lower castle and the road winding alongside the river. Fields of grain were being harvested, people like black dots moving to and fro. Wagons trundled along the road, and occasionally a man on horseback.
“We should have taken the main route down,” Rhodri said, obviously still angry with himself. “What possessed me to follow those directions?”
“He seemed to be a proper man,” I offered. “I felt nothing wrong in him.”
“A lure, and we fell into his trap.”
“Even without Blade, I don’t think they would have overwhelmed us, dearest,” I said. He paced on a little way then shook his head and smiled at me.
“I’m sorry! Foolish pride. Six of them, and I a Yesylt Knight, and you a healer of the woods! They would not have expected that, nor Stalker.”
“If they are marked by a smoke-cat the scars will never fade,” I said. “I think they were from that village, I’m sure I recognised one of them.”
“They must make a living trapping people.”
“And cats.”
I glanced into the woods, but there was still no sign of the smoke-cat. They existed on the edge of magic, and I told myself there was no point worrying about Stalker, he would return when he wanted. Skippy had tucked down again, unconcerned, and I looked at our group, smiling a little. Two horses, one an Icewine River stallion, the other a sturdy gelding, panniers and baskets, a man and a woman in good clothing, carrying weapons, and walking alongside a big stocky figure with dirty red hair and huge shovel teeth, carrying three stone-tipped spears. We were a striking group, looking for the staffs of power to raise the under lands again into the light of the warming sun.