Sacrifice.
As if struck by lightning, Gull cast off thoughts and confusion, and moved.
Too late.
Kern and the bodyguards rushed. Gull barely hefted his axe before they jumped him. They swung fists, kicked to trip him, body-slammed him to the dirt, mashed him under a half ton of flesh.
Past Kem's scar-laced head, Gull saw the sacrificial knife rise.
And fall.
"Noooo!!!!"
Gull bucked against sweaty bodies, bit, thrashed, jerked his arms and legs, but stayed pinned as if by a landslide. A fist smashed Gull's mouth, bloodied his lips. Yet the bodyguards didn't kill him: they must think Towser wanted him alive.
Through a haze of pain and madness, Kem's face loomed. Scars overlaid veins that throbbed with exertion, and the mangled side that lacked an ear was glossy with sweat.
"Kem, you bastard! You murdering fiend! You whore!" Unable to move, Gull spit filthy oaths into the man's face. "I went into a leech-infested swamp after you! I battled trolls to save your miserable life, you worthless cur! You owe me! That man's out to murder my sister!"
"You went after your sister, not me, you liar!" Kem growled from inches away. "You didn't care about me!"
"I went in after you, damn it! No one deserves to be eaten by cannibals! My sister went after you, too! Because she's got heart!" All this time, Gull pleaded inside that his sister wasn't already dead. "You never showed the gratitude of a cockroach! But you owe us! And now's the time to pay back! Or will you be a dog forever?"
For the first time, Gull saw the scarred brow pucker. Deep pockets lined Kem's eyes, and creases tightened his mouth. He was a haunted man.
Kem suddenly rolled off him. He whapped the other bodyguards. "Let him up!"
Confused, the thugs dropped away. They worked for Towser, but Kem had hired them. Whom to obey?
As they deliberated, Gull shot up like a catapult and brushed them aside. Scrambling on hands and knees, he snatched up his axe.
If his sister was dead, a bloody wreck gutted like a fish, he'd chop Towser into a thousand pieces.
Gaining his feet, he raced across the yellow grass for the monolith. The setting sun just topped the tall cone, casting a halo, and Gull could not see its darkened base clearly.
But he could hear. A savage growling and snarling and snapping welled up. And a man's shriek's.
Squinting, Gull sprinted into the shadow.
A giant badger savaged Towser.
Atop Greensleeves, who was unharmed, stood a small badger with a notched ear.
Half-mad, Gull stumbled.
And thought.
The notch-eared badger had come from the Whispering Woods, leagues away. It hadn't been carried here, couldn't have followed them, wasn't hidden in the wagons.
And only Greensleeves had touched that badger.
So Greensleeves must have conjured it.
So Greensleeves, too, was an unrealized wizard!
Like pebbles falling into slots, a dozen clues clicked and questions were answered. Greensleeves could summon animals she'd touched in the past. That was why the notch-eared badger seemed to follow them. Why the mushroom-beast, the fungusaur, attacked the armored wizard before he stomped Gull. Why it glowed green, brown, and blue, not twinkling from Towser's conjuring nor glowing white from Lily's. Why the giant badger appeared in the troll's lair when Greensleeves was endangered. Why it savaged Towser now.
His sister had nature magic: he'd always known that. Her "second sight." Her ability to tame wild animals, to find strays. How animals never harmed her, not even flies and leeches.
Recently he'd learned there was more: that the magic of the Whispering Woods had flooded her mind, made her a simpleton. Clear of the forest, she learned to think clearly.
But now she could conjure whatever she'd touched.
Greensleeves was a full-blooded wizard!
And Towser had known all along!
As with Lily, Towser sensed Greensleeves's wizardness. So he'd hired Gull as freightmaster, (though Chad could do the job), just to get Greensleeves. (And Gull had thought himself clever in bargaining her passage, while Towser feigned indifference. What a dunce!)
Towser had plotted all along to sacrifice Greensleeves, to steal her mana on this black altar. But his scheme had backfired.
Unrealized or not, his sister had conjured two badgers to protect her.
Yet two badgers wouldn't protect her from an enraged wizard and his bodyguards. Unless…
Big as a bull, wide and flat and gray-backed, face a riot of white and black stripes, the giant badger crouched low to the ground and shredded Towser's fancy striped gown.
The ridiculous box, tied with a scarf, tumbled from atop Towser's head and bounced across the trampled grass. Gull recognized the pink block from the crater, the mana vault. Towser must have planned to store his sister's mystic energy in it.
Except her badger had interrupted the sacrifice.
The skirts of Towser's gown were slashed, and the badger pulled on more cloth clamped in its fearsome jaws. Yet the wizard seemed unharmed, only discombobulated.
And sure enough, Towser spit out a spell and thrust up a hand, and the badger bowled over backward with a snort. Gull had seen that before, in the burned forest. A personal protection spell, an impenetrable aura.
Which Gull longed to test.
"Towser!" he screamed. "Fend off this!"
Gull slung his axe over his shoulder and pegged it like a thunderbolt straight at the wizard's chest.
Wood and steel whirled, end over end. But the heavy sharp head simply bounced off an invisible wall inches from the wizard's nose. Towser never even staggered from the blow. The axe thudded into the shadowed grass around the monolith.
The wizard held up a hand, fingers crooked, and backed away. He shouted over his shoulder, "Kill him! A hundred gold crowns to the one who beheads him!"
Like hounds to the scent, the bodyguards, who'd stood stunned by the strange turn of events, rushed Gull. All except Kem, who was rooted, face twisted by conflicting loyalties.
That left only three tough fighters with swords seeking Gull's head.
If they killed him-and they would-Greensleeves would be next.
The word returned.
Unless…
Whirling, Gull plucked his sister from the altar, sending the smaller badger tumbling. Plunking her down, he snatched up his axe-thank the gods he'd sharpened it-and parted the rope on her wrists.
"G-Gull," she bleated. "What do we d-do?"
Running was out. There was no place to go but over the cliff edge onto rocks.
"Conjure something!" He took a new heft on his axe, ready to swing on the three killers.
"W-what? I don't kn-know-"
"Anything! And hurry!"
Behind him came a small sigh of despair. This wouldn't work, he thought savagely. His sister was unpracticed in magic. Conjuring was an accident, an act of desperation. She couldn't just reach across the void and…
The air before him shimmered. Colors flickered like a rainbow touching the earth. Brown near the ground, green in the middle, blue at head height, yellow above…
Gull was bucked off his feet as the ground erupted.
Brambles, trees, and stone spears shot into the air.
Walls exploded everywhere across the bluff, random, rambling, haphazard.
The tall curly green-brown briars, from the battle of White Ridge, intermixed with the cave swords of the burned forest, as well as curiously stunted trees that twisted back on themselves to make an impassable barrier. The last, Gull knew, were from dismal reaches of the Whispering Woods.
Red earth supported the briars, white muck marked the stone swords, and carpets of dead leaves gave birth to the wall of wood. Smells rolled over Gull. Iron from the red earth, ammonia from bat guano, rot from churned leaves, all mixed with the salt tang of the sea breeze.