Tundra

The shifting, dappled shade reminded me of the sprawling, shady oaks and elms of Blackmouth, where a healthy swathe of grounds protected the secrecy of the castle built from black sandstone, that rarest of all types of stone that can be carried from the faraway southern shore. I thought of the sunlit arches that were the open faces of that Academy, and the corridors that were the crossed paths of its inner sanctum. But I was not at Blackmouth. I was far from even my home on the tundra, out in the scrub of young oak trees that was the garland of the greater Everglade. There was no twinkling ivy here, nor any hidden passages that were not green with leaves. On my belly in the overgrowth, I laid in wait for Reshrin, along with the Seafarer I had just met, the one called Eiron. It was just the two of us– Aais waited in a stream a while away.

Words were whispered beside me. ‘This is not a good plan.’ Eiron shuffled in the dirt, lying flat like a viper ready to strike, while I lay loose and useless, much more like a slug.

I gave my answer through gritted teeth. ‘So you’ve said. If you have a better one, I’m happy to hear it.’

‘You wouldn’t be,’ he replied. My plans have not been turning out the way I want them to for a while now.’ He moved again, in an uneasy sort of way.

‘I accept that yes, this is not a perfect plan,’ I admitted, ‘but it’s the best we’re going to do. We can’t go back to your people without something to force them to listen to us, and Aais’s people are a long way from here. We’re all out of our element. We need someone local. Hush.’

Through the trees, I saw him coming. He shambled more than walked, and his eyes were misted over with the Dream. Blood splattered the front of his carefully stitched leathers, which had been ripped and torn. He staggered to a halt, sniffing the air like a wolf.

‘What is this?’ he mused to himself. ‘The wizard is back? And he’s brought me some food. Tell me, seafarer, do you taste of fish and salt? Or seal-fat, maybe? I will find out....’

Eiron emerged from his hiding place, axe hefted in hands, and circled the possessed man. ‘Spirit, you don’t get to have a body very often, do you?’ he urged ‘So you’re all about new sensations?’

Ears pricked up in the air. ‘Yes?’

‘Here’s one, then!’ Eiron roared. ‘An axe to your head!’ The double head of the axe swung up, cleaving the air and making it rush. It swiped the druid by the side of his face– Eiron was out of suddenly control, blind with fury, but the druid was faster than he had at first appeared to be capable of. I saw surprised that the spirit creature didn’t use magic. I supposed that he didn’t know how. It was my time to intervene, I sensed. Seeing the druid distracted, I whispered the incantation and drew in the air the rune for an imprisoning spell. I had hoped to still both fighters, and capture the subdued druid who had once been my friend, but my spell rebounded. I got only a cold blast of wind for my troubles.

‘Don’t interfere!’ the druid hissed. ‘I’ll get to you later. I will dine on your skull soon enough, wizard, but this one needs to be taught a lesson first.’

‘A lesson?’ Eiron wondered aloud. ‘Ha! I’ll give you a lesson. I’ve been fighting man and beast since I could hold an axe. There’s nothing a mere spirit can teach me.’

‘Squid, maybe…? Do you taste of squid?’ The druid latched onto Eiron with his jaws, but I knocked him free. My spell returned to my hand like a boomerang, and I held it aloft, a threat imbued with potency. ‘Alright then. I had hoped to handle your friend first, but you’ve annoyed me now.’ The spirit spoke in broken syllables, not quite Reshrin but not entirely foreign either. It was bizarre. Eiron lunged again, but the druid cast his arms up, and the ground beneath the Seafarer’s feet melted, so that he sank up to his waist in a pool of green. Now it was my turn to issue a challenge. I felt barely up to the task, but I tried my painful hardest.

‘Do your worst,’ I invited him.

The druid laughed. ‘Believe me, I intend to.’

It seemed that the druid had found his magical abilities, or rather that the spirit had discovered ice magic inside the brain he possessed. I countered with a rune of warmth. We went on like this– hot and cold, strangling and freed, struggling breathless and flushed with air, crumbling and stabilised. Everything I threw at him, Reshrin’s possessor countered. Every element –fire and ice, water and forest, earth and sea, wind and vortex– met its opposite. Then, finally, one of my spells struck home. My stones were flying, and then the thing fell battered to the ground. I brushed down the front of my robe, rubbing my hands from whence the magic had come. While the druid lay panting, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Eiron pulling himself free. Even a cemented earth was no match for that strength in the end.

The possessor spirit howled. ‘What? No! I’ve not forgotten you, seafarer! You’re not getting away!’

And with that, he lunged. Eiron sprinted, those coiled muscles springing him off the ground, and dived into the nearby river, hurling himself into its welcoming depths, where willow tendrils trailed and cranky roots drank the moisture in. Beneath the surface, he vanished, but I knew what must be happening. The druid ran, too, diving in after him, and didn’t surface. Of course, Aais waited in the water, with claws and teeth hitherto unseen, claws that could hold a man down until he drowned while Eiron hauled himself back up onto the bank.

‘That’s the other thing I’m guessing you didn’t realise about having a body,’ he spluttered, victoriously. ‘You need to breathe. Come on, Aais, drag him up here before he dies.’ The fish man erupted from the surface of the water on command, dragging something waterlogged that was as still as Eiron and I had been when we laid in wait. To me, meanwhile the Seafarer inclined his head. ‘I take it back,’ he said. ‘That went well.’

‘For you, maybe,’ I scoffed, taking in the scene. ‘But you saw how easily he kept me from attacking him?’

Eiron couldn’t lie. ‘Yes.’

‘What do you think his master will be like?’ I wondered aloud.

‘No-one died, wizard, so you’re ahead of me,’ was the grating reply I got. ‘Take the win, yes?’