It wasn’t exactly a flying carpet.
The thing was more like a series of hides stretched out over a thin, ivory platform that looked far too flimsy to hold four children and one full-grown wizard. But magic meant that stuff like that didn’t matter, and though it flexed alarmingly when the wind picked up or Balangor steered it into a turn, it definitely wouldn’t come apart in a heap of cloth and bones and drop them all, shrieking, to their doom on the forest floor below.
At least, that was what Rusty kept telling himself.
It didn’t help that they’d basically been lashed in by several of the Mummers, tucked into things like sleeping bags that weren’t sealed at the bottom, and directed to hang on to the straps by their hands and not let go. Hopefully that was just an unnecessary precaution. Hopefully.
But as the hours went on, and the platform slid through the fog, occasionally riffling the leaves on the very tallest of the canopy trees, Rusty started to unwind enough to feel a little regret. This was the first time he’d flown, and he couldn’t look over the edge. He’d always thought that he’d go on an airplane eventually, and he’d been fully prepared to fight someone for a window seat, but this was cooler and there was no option to see the world from above.
That said, he’d done a little of that with the Treestrider, and though the memories were painful, he’d gotten a look down from a slightly higher perch. And it was night, too, so it was harder to see stuff. He did vaguely wonder how Balangor managed to keep an eye out for trouble, but that train of thought just got him worrying about crashing again, so he shut it down.
He tried to sleep like Balangor had suggested, but no dice. The wind whispered through the cloth tubes when it caught them the right way, and it was cool enough that he shivered through the layers of robes he’d been told to wear. Occasionally one of the other kids would sneeze, or shift a bit, but aside from that there was only the night’s silence and the low whistle of the wind, a droning that shifted whenever it caught the platform at an angle. No talking had been the other major rule for this flight.
After a few hours, when his belly was starting to gurgle and the pressure under his stomach was getting a little hard to bear, Balangor rose from where he was flat in the middle of the platform, getting up to his knees, and glancing around. “Hang on,” he said in a voice barely louder than the wind, and tilted the structure, sending it into a slow and easy loop. Alice snorted and scrabbled, barely got ahold of her bracing straps, but aside from stretching the cloth tube a bit, she came to no harm.
“Must have been sleeping,” Roz observed. “I’m kind of impressed.”
“I mean, Will conks out whenever he goes on a ride in the truck,” Rusty thought back. “Some people do that. The motion puts them right out.”
“We’re not that lucky? Nuts. Been boring as heck, this ride.”
“Beats getting shot at,” Rusty thought, worming his head out of the tube a bit, so he could keep his eyes on Balangor’s silhouette.
He didn’t have long to view the wizard. Once they dropped below the treeline and started descending, everything got dark, fast.
Up until it wasn’t.
Light flared up, blinding them, and Rusty heard Ken yelp in fear, fought down a wave of panic as the platform kept on its appointed path. If this were an attack Balangor would be evading right now, he told himself, and settled for blinking his tears away until his eyes adjusted.
The platform eased to a stop, shuddered a bit as it came down on the ground, and Rusty got a good look at where they’d stopped.
To the east, a crumbled cliff rose sharply, festooned with a climbing vine that glowed whitish-purple. A steady stream of water flowed down from there, into a pool that filled most of the base in the hollow of a waterfall pool. The pool turned into dozens of smaller streams, branching out something like a snowflake’s seeking points, eddying around rocks carved by erosion and slicked with moss. The platform had settled on the largest of the rocks, in roughly a square area that was marked out with metal rods. Each rod had a glowing crystal at its tip, just barely visible within the bright corona of light.
How had they not seen this? Even bedded down as they were, there would have been a glow. Rusty replayed the memory of the last bit of the flight in his mind, and confirmed that no, there had been nothing up until they broke what had to have been the perimeter of the clearing.
“Magic, my friend,” Roz pointed out. “Why try to figure it out?”
“So I know the rules,” Rusty thought back. “It has rules, even if they’re not teaching all of them to us. I want to know how it works. This is my one shot to learn real magic, and how am I going to do that if I don’t understand how it works?”
“Okay, then what’s the point of a light that you can’t see if you’re not… oh. OH. Now I feel dumb,” Roz pouted.
“You should,” Rusty thought back. “It’s pretty obvious.”
But evidently Balangor didn’t agree, and felt they needed a full explanation. “Keep your voices low, but you may discuss freely. This glade is hidden. The light will not escape the clearing, because I do not wish to alert the enemy of its presence. Unwrap yourselves and take relief at the farther streams, drink directly from the waterfall if you need water, but take only sparingly. I will not give you another chance to stop, so if you must piss while I am aloft you will be wet when we land. That will not inspire confidence in the Commanders I must impress.”
“No food?” Gunther asked, and Rusty could tell he was trying to keep the whine out of his voice.
“Shitting aloft will impress the commanders even less,” Balangor said, looking at him as if he hated having to say such an obvious thing.
“Oh!” Alice gasped, as she sat up, and hurriedly worked her way out. “Someone’s watching us from across the way!”
“Yes,” Balangor said. “This glade is guarded by those who made it. Disturb them not, they have their duties to tend to. As do we. You have ten minutes to sort yourselves out. Do not waste them.”
Rusty got himself out pretty quickly. He’d watched the Mummers tie him in closely, and his memory let him do it all in reverse without a hitch. Once out, he helped Alice, then Gunther with the last of their bindings.
Alice’s eyes didn’t leave the treeline though, and when Rusty turned to consider it, he saw a pair of figures just in the shadows outside the purple glow of the vine. And the way they moved their heads when he walked carefully over to Gunther, he had seen that eerie, simultaneous sort of body language before.
“Elves, Mister Frodo! It’s elves!” squeaked Roz.
“Elves,” Rusty muttered, and Gunther’s eyes grew large.
“Elves! Oh my.” Alice curtseyed in their general direction.
The two figures didn’t move, merely watched.
“I guess this sort of makes this like Rivendell,” Rusty said, as he snuck off behind a sprawling tree to try and do his business. It was more difficult than he expected; the two elves moved to watch him, and he was having trouble going while people were watching.
It was rougher for Alice. She didn’t like them watching at all. Finally, Rusty and the others stood around her with their backs turned, holding their robes out to give a sort of privacy screen. Balangor watched, amused.
“Your people have strange customs,” he said, simply. “Where is the shame in pissing?”
“It’s not that,” Alice said, and Rusty heard her finish up and start getting her clothes arranged. “It’s the parts we show when we do that. It ain’t decent for strangers to be seeing them.”
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Balangor laughed. The elves shifted, shook their heads, and he quieted. “We’re going to go see the dead laid in rows, and you worry about such things,” he said, stepping closer and lowering his voice. “Sit,” he said, pointing to a rock closer to the center. “Since you all managed in a timely fashion, we have time. I will tell you what we are flying into.”
He was smiling, but it wasn’t a request. Rusty took his place with the others, shifting to keep his sandaled feet out of the streams that broke around the rock. Balangor stood before it, stretching and glancing skywards, studying the clouds. “It took a full year to get this far,” he said, finally. “A year from Firsthold, through endless trees and hills. A year with grach ambushing us every time we put a foot wrong; not that we knew it at first. All we knew was that helot patrols would simply fail to come back. The grach used the water to their advantage, hid their tools so we mistook them for more strange animals. We think the satyrs tipped them off, during their northward flight, but it matters little, now.”
Balangor took a seat himself, removed his sandals and splashed his feet in the water. It was strange to see him do it, let himself relax like this. He hadn’t taught them much, only a couple of survival classes, back in the tower. He’d been as formal as the others. But out here, he was a vastly different person.
“They still do that.” Balangor’s smile died. “They use the water to strike, and they’re damned good at it. If you see something like a log moving against the current, it’s not a log. Get clear and get helots to kill it. Keep your eyes open at all times. The satyrs are rare, but they’re better shots than the grach, and the dark lord keeps them well supplied with charms. And they are artful shots with their bows. They have been trying to pass that skill on to the grach, but we have done a good job at whittling down their best. Especially here.”
“Here?” Ken looked around.
“We are in the heart of their territory. The last band of wilderness before the Dark Lord’s lair. He has holed up in the largest of the old ruins. The elves believe that is where the ancients had their world door. If it’s there, it isn’t open, and if you can kill him before he opens it, we can save this world. The last of the eighth legion fights and dies daily to give you that opportunity.” No smile at all now, only a solemn scowl on Balangor’s face. “More and more grach come from the flanks, streaming endlessly from the swamps beyond. If the eighth loses their hold, then we fail, and this world falls to the Lion.”
“Um,” Ken said, rubbing his neck. “That’s something I had a question about. Is it all right to talk about the, uh, the Lion?”
“Ask. I will not promise an answer you enjoy,” Balangor said, drawing his feet out and mopping them on the moss.
“Well… where we come from, Lions are big, fuzzy cats. Bigger than people, but not by a lot,” Ken said. “Did the translator spell goof up with that?”
“No. But you were talking about a lion, I believe. Not the Lion. Perhaps it was something like a big cat at one time. It has worn many bodies. It will wear many more unless you kill it, here.”
“Like a ghost or something?” Rusty asked. “There was a book I read, where a dark lord lost his body and was just a spirit, just barely hanging on with a magical ring he made.”
“No, not a… ghost? Hm. Old myths, though. But a wildspell or echo could explain… ghosts. No, the Lion is no ghost. The Lion was a runebearer of sorts. The first doormakers found it, in a world beyond reckoning. And we of the Unicorn must return it there, one miserable remnant at a time.”
“The Lion and the Unicorn! Oh, it’s like the poem!” Alice said. “The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown… um… I… something about a town?”
“Holy heck, that’s right, that was that random poem smack in the middle of Alice and Wonderland, wasn’t it?” Ken stared at her.
Balangor stared, too, his eyes hard and suspicious. “This is the second time you have mentioned the Lion. And you know of the Unicorn, as well… If I did not know better… well. The Prophecy must be our guide. Like it or not, our actions must follow it, if we are to end this.”
“There’s a unicorn in all of this?” Rusty asked.
“Of sorts. It is the symbol of our King,” Balangor did a strange twisting motion, putting one arm palm up, and the other palm down and away, almost as if pushing something toward the ground. “Long may he reign.”
Out of the corner of the eye, Rusty saw the two elves following suit.
“Wait. There was a name, earlier,” Rusty said. “The Tower Lord asked us if we had the strength to kill Ringaldr. Is that the Lion’s name?”
“No. It is the Dark Lord’s name,” Balangor returned his hands to the rock, looked away. “Ringaldr was one of us, when we came to this w— when we were tasked with exploring this land. He found some remnant of the Lion, and it invaded him, tempted him. He betrayed us, and let the Lion into his mind. And it wears him like we wear robes. It glows behind his eyes. It speaks in his voice. And it wields his runes.”
“Oh man,” Rusty whispered. “Um. What is it we have to do, exactly?”
“I do not know,” Balangor said. “The Prophecy suggests that you must face him.”
The kids looked at each other, wary and worried.
“All right, enough,” Ken stood up. “Listen, sir, you need us to do this. We really want to survive this. Please, for the love of god, will you just tell us the prophecy already?”
Balangor stood. “Insolence!” he barked.
The elves moved, stepping into the purple light, hands raised, and he grimaced, lowered his voice. “I had hoped that our lessons would have taught you your proper station, at least…”
“We just want to help you,” Rusty said, remembering how Ken had worked with him to get Alice to choose to go exploring with them and not tell on them, even though she wanted to. The key part there had been to make her think that she was still in control of things, still had a choice in what they did. “Please sir, we’ll understand if you don’t tell us, that’s your right. But without your guidance, I don’t know how well this will go.”
Balangor turned away, and Rusty could almost tell that the wheels were turning inside his mind. Though he was the wizard they’d worked with the least, he and Reevian seemed to have the least ability to keep a poker face. That and Rusty was getting pretty good at seeing the little habits in people. The little, easily-forgettable tells that his enchantments let him notice, even if he was still figuring out how to best use them.
“Zarkimorr is the only one who has the full wording of it. He has said that it is from the King himself, and I have to assume that he would not dare to lie about such a thing. But I do know the broad strokes of what must happen, here. Those of you who survive must enter Ringaldr’s redoubt. When you confront the Dark Lord and he tempts you, the Chosen One shall resist temptation. The Chosen One will reveal their power and single-minded determination and end the Dark Lord, heralding his fall with a sound greater than thunder. That death shall be the beginning of the end of the Lion.”
The children considered this, eyes wide. Rusty felt the words cement themselves into his memory.
“You say this is from the King?” Ken asked. “Does he do this sort of… thing?”
“He has the rune of prophecy,” Balangor said, simply. “Handed down through his dynasty since its founding. Without it, we would have been slaved to the Lion long ago.”
The waterfall flowed down, splashed on the rocks as the children turned this over in their heads.
“Come,” Balangor said. “We are out of time. Get back into your bundlings, and tie them as best you can.”
It was a little hard, getting things laced up without the Mummers to help, but they managed. Rusty helped the others sort it out, giving directions when someone was having trouble. And when they were strapped in to Balangor’s satisfaction, he lay down and stretched out, and willed the kite-like platform into the air once more.
A few hours later, Roz popped back into existence next to Rusty’s head. “You know, we never asked him what happened after that whole sound greater than thunder thing. We live, right?”
Rusty ran his memory back through the words of the Prophecy. And he marked how Reevian’s gaze slid away from them, after he’d said that part. That was a tell of some sort. But he didn’t know the man well enough to say what it meant, just that it was a new one.
His hand slid down to his pocket, and the little metal box that Terathon had given him. His ticket home, if things went poorly. “We’ll live,” he promised Roz.
But he found his gaze straying past Roz, to Alice. Then Gunther, on the other side of the platform, bundled in and hanging on for dear life, shivering and hungry and determined.
Rusty knew that he and Ken had ways to get back, now. But had Balangor and Reevian given their pupils anything like that?
And Rusty didn’t know if he could just leave them behind, even if things got really bad. He didn’t know if he could live with who he’d be, if he did that.
How could he do that and still call himself anything like a good guy?
He decided he couldn’t. And then, he had a weird little impulse.
It was a temptation, an idea that grabbed hold of his mind, and wouldn’t let go.
And he knew if he didn’t do it now, he would never work up the nerve to do it again.
So Rusty let go of the strap, reached a hand down into the bundling, worked the box out of his pocket.
He looked at it, in the dim light of the stars.
And then, before he lost his nerve, he threw it over the side of the platform.
It fell into the night, and as Roz howled and protested, Rusty buried his face in the bundling and tried to find sleep.
And though he didn’t know it at the time, had no inkling he’d made a good choice, much later he would be very, very glad he had done this.