Chapter 11: High Druid

 

High Druid: Chapter 11

Skinner stayed with Kurtney for fifty-nine years. They lived in a cave Kurtney created by druidry from the rock beneath the plain itself. One day he awoke to find Kurtney gone and realized that the old druid had finally learned to ‘become one with the wind’. In Skinner’s terms, the old dhari had assimilated—returned to elemental form in a near-instant process that bypassed natural decay.

He said his goodbyes and remanded their cave back to its place beneath the plain. Though he had known for many years the process for summoning a guardian, he had stayed to watch over the grove. It helped assuage his guilt. It also enabled him to watch the progress of Voutan.

What began as a single stronghold became a nation of three cities. The people took to their lives well, plying their old crafts and creating new ones to suit their circumstance. Skinner’s little refugee caravan had become a nation of thousands. Though he seldom visited in person, Skinner kept close watch on the peoples of the island by means of animal minions.

With Kurtney gone, though, Skinner knew that he was obliged to gather with the others of the Order at Koltain to appoint a new Pinnacle. He would have the chance there to prove his skills in ancient rituals and possibly attain Pinnacle himself, though he was uncertain as to his own ambition toward the position. Sorcery and offering instruction at the Diahlarium was much more enjoyable.

He readied everything for his summons. It would have to take place at the zenith of tonight’s moon. A name had blown through the calm winds of his dreams, promising to do his bidding should he simply call out that name. But the name eluded him any time he tried to speak it. He knew that it would find its way from his lips only in the ritual of summoning.

“By the moon,” he chanted at the appointed hour. “By the shadow of the Dark Sister; by the rays of life-giving Diahl; by the Etherwall and the Song of Maltran; I call you forth, O guardian of the Grove.”

His feet carried through the galloping dance of the ritual. Kandor bobbed with his movements, the limbs of the staff trees following as though blown by a peculiar wind. He trotted and frolicked across the clearing at the grove’s center as though possessed of a horse’s spirit. His song turned to something equine yet fey.

“By the dreams of Yin Ebris I call you, O guardian of the Grove. Come, Ratashakti of the Fields. You are called to fend the Grove.”

A silver shimmer filled the grove. Starting from a single point like the glow of a lightning bug, it bloomed in a way that suggested the air itself had been rent aside like a curtain. Hoof beats sounded from the distance. The glow roiled from a deep yellow to a pure white, growing from pinpoint to the size of a small hut. Finally, as he bowed and finished the song, Skinner looked up to see a pure white horse ride through. It reared and whinnied, and Skinner realized his mistake. A single, pure silver horn grew from the center of the horse’s forehead, midway between eyes and ears. Ratashakti was a unicorn.

He bowed deeply, enchanted by the unicorn’s physical beauty, but awed far more by its majestic presence. Its purity humbled him. Virtue radiated from the unicorn as poignantly as fragrance from hyacinth. He remained bent in his bow until he felt her eyes on him.

“I am unworthy . . .” he muttered, backing away so as not to taint the unicorn’s atmosphere with his own corruption.

Be at peace, she told him, voice resilient in his mind and smearing his inner vision with clear, bright rainbows.

He awoke some time later in a flagstoned courtyard, wondering how he had gotten there. He closed his eyes and tried to recall. She had touched her horn to his forehead. A searing light. scorching pain. Joy. And now he was here and awake.

“Welcome to Koltain,” the voice was steady, but somehow foreign. Skinner turned to find a centaur studying him.

“Good evening,” Skinner nodded, studying his new host.

“I am Bahahrathanair,” the centaur bowed. “You may call me Bahra.”

Bahra was a highly well-conditioned man from the waist up. His broad shoulders made him look leaner than he was. From the waist down, he was reasonably small tan equine. His long mane mixed chestnut and auburn to match his eyebrows and flanks. His intricately braided tail appeared to be a lighter shade of chestnut. He was garbed in a bronze breastplate, armed with a short bow. The hilt of a saber peeked up over his right shoulder.

“Skinner,” he replied, reaching his hand out in greeting.

“I know,” Bahra glared at him, animosity obvious in the clench of his posture.

“Problem?” Skinner asked.

“Don’t care for you,” Bahra shrugged.

“Wait till you get to know me,” Skinner grinned.

“Wait for what?” Bahra asked.

“Then you’ll despise me,” Skinner shrugged. “Maybe we should just beat the puddin’ out of each other now and get past all the awkwardness.”

“Suits me,” Bahra growled, reaching for his saber.

Skinner stared at him, waiting. Bahra stared back.

“You gonna swing that thing?” Skinner said after a tense moment.

“You are unarmed,” Bahra said flatly.

“Never,” Skinner shook his head, smiling gleefully.

“No tricks,” growled the centaur.

“No Arcanum?” Skinner crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.

“None,” Bahra said flatly.

“Right,” Skinner smiled again. “So you don’t care to make it a fair fight?”

“Fair enough,” Bahra shrugged, waving the point of his saber menacingly.

“Love to stay and play,” Skinner sighed as though suddenly very sad. “But I have to go answer the Challenge—meet with the Council.”

“I am here to escort you,” Bahra nodded.

“Carry on, then,” Skinner nodded.

“Not until I test my mettle against you,” Bahra’s eyes narrowed.

“You win,” Skinner threw his arms up in surrender.

“Fight me,” Bahra stepped closer, smacking Skinner with the flat of his blade.

“Fine,” Skinner shook his head, exasperated. “Kandor!”

Bahra reared, intending to trample Skinner as well as slicing down with great force driving his saber. But Skinner expected it and dove beneath the attack, rolling to bring his staff across the hind legs near the knee. Bahra bellowed in pain and rage, turning to swing the saber again. Skinner dodged.

“We good now?” Skinner half-teased, knowing the centaur would not concede so easily.

“Eat thunder!” Bahra launched into a series of attacks with the saber.

Skinner pushed the limits of his patience, dodging blows and blocking with his staff when he could. Bahra’s reach made up for the length of Skinner’s staff—and then some. He soon had Skinner up against the north wall of the courtyard, hard pressed to meet the impossibly fast saber strokes. Somehow, between strokes, Skinner was able to jab in the butt of his staff and bloody the centaur’s lip.

“Impossible,” Bahra stared at the blood on his fingers as he brought them away from his split lip.

“Nevertheless,” Skinner said smartly between gulps of air. Though Skinner was near completely winded, the centaur had hardly broken a sweat.

Sudden applause filled the courtyard with a cacophony that Skinner found appalling. He put his hands over his ears and dropped to sit on the flagstones, his back against the wall. He watched as numerous robed figures joined them in the courtyard, clapping and cheering for some unknowable reason.

“Pardon?” Skinner moved his hands. A tall blonde dhari lowered his hood and addressed Skinner with a kindly expression.

“Are you injured?” the dhari repeated. The others had fallen silent with the exception of comments murmured among onlookers.

“No,” Skinner shook his head. “Hyperesthesia—too much noise hurts my head.”

“Oh,” the dhari nodded sagely. “Yes. A consequence of shunning the cities . . .”

“Why was everyone cheering?” Skinner asked, working past the awkward silence.

“None has ever drawn first blood against Bahra,” answered the dhari. “I think none was ever challenged so . . . passionately, either. Bahra was very fond of Dun, as are we all.”

“Sorry,” Skinner frowned. He looked around at the gathering, Dun’s memories whispering names to match the faces. A white haired man half again Skinner’s height lumbered toward him, open hatred coursing from his iron-grey eyes as though he could will Skinner to shrivel up and die on the spot.

“Dun was very fond of you all as well—except for you, Geravadith, you unnatural offspring of a kulu’s get on a snowtroll.”

“What?” the old man stared at him blankly for a moment. Skinner maintained the eye contact.

“You heard me, Geravadith Wanderer,” Skinner held his gaze.

“Dun?” the old man’s expression softened. “You melded?”

“He asked that I retain his memories,” Skinner said softly, dropping his eyes.

“Dun made you his legacy?” Something in the man’s tone hinted at more than Skinner could appreciate, a knowledge he was not yet privy to.

“I house his memory,” Skinner nodded slowly.

“Make it known,” he charged a younger man in an olive robe. The man disappeared forthwith, Skinner assumed to deliver the message to parties unknown.

“Welcome, Skinner,” Geravadith Wanderer said, his tone invitingly warm now. “You have passed tests of which you cannot guess the magnitude.”

“Happy to do so,” Skinner said sincerely. He was certain failure would have meant death—or worse.

They escorted him into an indoor arena with a high, arched ceiling frescoed in local constellations and mythical images dominated by drastyns. He studied them between introductions and conversations, exuberant with curiosity and fascinated with new knowledge. The druids brought in dancers and other entertainment, wine and a feast worthy of the greatest vegetarian palace anywhere. Skinner felt dirty and wicked to find himself craving fresh meat, but let it pass without comment.

“You druids sure know how to throw a shindig,” he told Geravadith later.

“We gather so seldom,” the old man shrugged. “And tomorrow at daybreak we shall have our new Pinnacle.”

“I’m eager to see the process,” Skinner nodded.

“You shall be tested tonight at moonrise,” Geravadith said as though granting him a boon of inestimable worth.

“Tested how?” Skinner had learned enough to know that there were secrets he was likely to find very much contrary to his tastes. He had caught hints of it in things Kurtney taught him, but could never quite put his finger on it.

“You shall summon the Quien,” Geravadith smiled broadly, a smile augmented by wine.

“A keen what?” Skinner asked, perplexed. He waved off an overzealous musician to lower the noise level around him.

“Quien,” Geravadith said, then drew it out phonetically. “Ka-we-en. Quien. A type of Outer.”

“Outer? Like me?” Skinner pursued the thought, growing more troubled as his imagination took several steps down a road he never wanted to travel.

“No. Not like you. They are malicious and destructive. You must conquer one to prove your worthiness to the Order.”

“What?” Skinner stared, aghast. “What if I don’t conquer it?”

“Then it shall possess you,” Geravadith shrugged and laughed gleefully. “And we shall be forced to dismiss you both to its home.”

“Lovely,” Skinner put his wine down and went outside to clear his head in the cool air. Outside, he found the night too lovely to leave for the sake of the party. He lay on his back gazing at the stars until Bahra obstructed his view.

“You are required,” Bahra said gruffly.

Skinner jumped up and followed him in to the arena at the stronghold’s center. The arena’s center pit had been cleared and arranged with numerous flowers, hedged in by the same thorny trees that hedged the staff tree grove on its southern edge, the one Kurtney had taken his scourge from. Everyone watched as Skinner was escorted to the pit’s center. As Bahra made his way from the circle, the hedge of thorn trees closed behind him and locked Skinner in.

Skinner called unconsuming flames to the knotted mass of limbs at the circle’s center. He knew the spell intuitively, could hear it in the voice of the air spirits around him. Opening himself to the subtle songs of the spirits around him, he stretched his mind and spirit into the eldritch ether between the myriad worlds. Searching, reaching, sensing with his arcane senses, his sorcery and druidic skills, he called into the cosmic maelstrom, the multitudinous juncture of conscious worlds.

Quien, he whispered into the cosmos. The fog parted around him as though he were an eel slithering between blades of seagrasses surrounded by bright coral and strange anemones. He kept himself open, refusing to be distracted by the beauty and majesty around him, knowing the danger of losing himself in the infinite sea of stars.

Something struck out at him as though he were a bothersome insect. He grabbed onto it and hauled himself back to where his physical body stared unseeing into flames that grew vibrant with a neon array of hues and shadow. The presence thrashed, but he held it in the vice of his will, commanding it as though his was the greatest authority in this vastness. Still, the presence thrashed itself, lashing out at him with malevolent hunger and violence.

“Nahl-Lux,” Skinner’s mouth resumed the chant. “By the thread of my will, by the power of the Dark Sister, I adjure you—come!”

Skinner’s eyes focused on a shadow in the flames. It grew, sucking in the light as though its gravity were supreme. Swirling into a disc, it sucked the light and heat from the flames. The disc grew, taking on definition. Malevolence radiated from the darkness as though an offering to compensate the light it consumed. Skinner watched as it formed itself into a roiling blackness shaped like a winged gargoyle.

Skinner studied it, ignoring its constant barrage of palpable malice. Eyes formed in the roiling blackness. The form completed itself. Its dark skin seemed to crawl and roil as though the darkness were never content to terry long in one place. What passed for skin was jet and glossy like that of an octopus. Its leathery wings were smooth, skin stretched to taut flexibility by a network of bones as intricate as feathers.

“You’re a beauty, aren’t you?” Skinner spoke to it as a man might speak to a favored pet.

You are a pedantic fool fathered by a scrit and born of a peasant ahashma. It railed against him, but Skinner rallied to his inner sanctum and remained untouched by the demon’s loathing.

“Do you know why I have summoned you here?” he asked.

I know it is the custom of your kind to enslave us for your barbaric purposes, to abduct us from the Hall of Larvae to work your vile ends . . .

“Will you consent to do my bidding, or must I conquer you?”

The barrage of hatred, doubt, and despair tapered for a moment as though the creature were too confused to maintain it.

Consent? You are a fool among a race of fools. No Dien-quien would ever consent to do the bidding of shrubbers and makers of thornwalls.

“Nevertheless,” Skinner coaxed, holding his power at bay should violence break out. “I find enslavement a rather . . . unpalatable . . . arrangement.”

Then return me! The demons voice carried the weight of sorcery-augmented command. Skinner flinched, then smiled broadly.

“Nice try,” he took a stride closer. “But I’m no more willing to be enslaved than I am to enslave.”

You must command or release me, the demon’s constant barrage of malice ceased altogether. Its tone had changed to one of childish affront, as though Skinner were not playing a game by the rules.

“Be free, then,” Skinner shrugged his nonchalance. Behind him a collective gasp erupted as though the domed chamber itself had taken an enormous breath.

Free? Maniacal laughter broke from the flames, resounding in echoes throughout the arena.

“I must insist, however,” Skinner said in mild tones edged with resolve, “that you do no harm.”

No harm? Do you think yourself exempt? Pedantic fool. The Quien shall set themselves against the house—NO! The Quien shall forever be ally to the house of Skinner.

The maniacal laughter echoed eerily for several moments after the dark presence popped out of existence, taking all Skinner’s arcane fire with it. Silence followed. Long, tense moments crept through the immense auditorium like a touch of death. The druids stood in place, gazing down on him as though they had never witnessed anything even remotely like the scene that had just played out.

“Light, then,” Skinner summoned his luminorbs. Though his system of orbiting spheres had grown to a population of thirty-six since the meld with Dun, he refused to allow anyone to see more than the twelve he knew to be the most sought-after number. Only Kurtney, Geravadith, and Gharland had more than eighteen, at least as far as he had seen.

“Well,” he gazed around at the Council. “That was anticlimactic, wasn’t it?”

“Gentlemen,” Geravadith smiled and raised his voice to address them all. “I believe we have another in the Order. Who else cares to see Skinner of Diahlar ascend to Pinnacle?”

“No!” Skinner held his hand up to stall them. “I do not wish to be considered. I have neither the audacity nor the altruism to be your Pinnacle.”

“You have proven your worth,” Geravadith said sternly. “You may not refuse the Council’s will.”

“I may,” Skinner gazed around at them. “Choice is the victory of liberty.”

“The council does not champion liberty,” another druid stated firmly. “You will abide by the will of the Council.”

“Or what?” Skinner looked them over again. “You’re supposed to be peace-lovers.”

“Why, Skinner?” Geravadith asked sadly, resigned. “Why will you contend with Koltain?”

“Because you are flawed in a way too fundamental for me to tolerate,” Skinner said softly.

“Think you yourself better?” The single female dhari among them glared down at him.

“No,” He shrugged. “Not a matter of good or bad, better or worse. Matter of convictions. Matter of ethical behavior and responsibility.”

“We have served the Vale well,” Geravadith asserted.

“You have,” Skinner nodded. “My memories—augmented of course by Dun’s and of late Kurtney—go back to the original Council. You have served the Vale well indeed. And yet . . .”

“Yet nothing!” A young roundear druid stepped down a row toward him. “You blaspheme this austere gathering. I suggest we banish you.”

“You haven’t the stones for it, little boy,” Skinner growled, his patience at its end.

“That is just the problem,” Skinner spoke to the entire audience now. “You think you’re untouchable, that you hold supreme sway over the Vale. You call yourselves its protectors, and yet you cloister yourselves in various keeps and direct things as though you own it. You hoard your knowledge and keep your secrets as though no one else is worthy of lore.”

“No one is,” a few of the voices mumbled.

“You are not,” Skinner asserted. “What kind of foolishness is this particular rite? The one we just witnessed. What happens when one of the Order gets to this point and finds that the shadows of his own soul find brotherhood in the abyss of a Quien’s malice?

“I’m telling you now: you have to cease this tradition immediately. Soon or later one of you will be possessed or enthralled by one of those things. And a Quien with a Druid’s power will cause more devastation than any of us can either remember or imagine.”

“Your arrogance is appalling!” The female dhari chastised him sternly. “Who are you to lecture this venerable assembly?”

“A man who knows how the wind blows,” Skinner said in a low voice, his shoulders suddenly curved as though with impossible burdens.

“Do not set foot again in Sacred Koltain,” Geravadith said grimly. “Skinner, you are hereby exiled from the Order and shall henceforth be considered a person of suspicion. It is spoken.”

“So be it,” Skinner said doggedly, suddenly feeling tired and old. “So be it.

“See you around—or not. But you can bet I’ll be around. Keeping my eye on you. For now, though, I’ll return to Voutan. There is much to do . . .”

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[TLK]

"They lived in a cave Kurtney created by druidry..."

This needs to be the start of a poem. Sadly, I can think of little to rhyme with druidry.