Darkwell - Douglas Niles [29]
Snowflakes pranced around her as she crested the great ridge, the summit that separated the human realms of Corwell from the wilderness of Myrloch Vale.
And here the storm broke into chaos.
Robyn crashed into a barrier of evil so potent, so pervasive, that her soaring momentum vanished into nothingness. Where the land behind her had been clean and healthful, full of nature's vitality, she recoiled now, faced with a vision of death, decay, and corruption. The devastation began at the crest and trailed into the vastness of Myrloch Vale.
Even Myrloch itself, a great lake of crystalline azure in Robyn's mind, had succumbed to the rot. Visible in the distance to the north, it was now dark and dull, the water seeming more a stretch of brackish swamp than a vast loch. The forests around it now sprawled lifeless, barren skeletons of trees rising forlornly from blackened ground.
The magic that had carried her thus far vanished in the face of a far stronger and more immediate power. In the flash of that instant, Robyn's body became flesh. She crashed among the rocks at the crest of the highest peak and lay there stunned, shivering, and bleeding.
But the worst injury had been inflicted upon her soul. The desecration of so vast an area, and the totality of the destruction, tore at every fiber of her faith. How could she cope with power such as this?
Dimly she realized that her arm lay behind her, twisted at an unnatural angle by jagged rocks. She shifted slightly, and pain knifed through her shoulder.
The immediacy of her suffering brought her attention back to her own predicament. She sat up, wincing in pain, and knew that her arm was broken, probably in several places. Her lips and mouth were swollen and bleeding. She spat, and several chips of teeth fell onto the rocks.
As she looked up, the expanse of the vale again came before her vision, and she moaned with despair. The cold wind, an inanimate thing now, pulled at her torn robe, sucking the heat from her exposed skin. Now flakes of snow swirled around her, stinging the scraped skin along her face and cheeks.
Mother, I have failed you, she thought in despair. She did not know if she spoke to her spiritual mother – the goddess, mother of all the isles – or to her true mother, the druid she had never known. It didn't matter, really.
I shall die on this rock. My anger has sent me on a fool's quest, but must the punishment be so harsh?
Slowly the pain disappeared from most of her body, though her arm and shoulder continued to throb. Was the chill numbing her senses, or had the pain indeed eased?
She twisted again among the rocks, trying to avoid a root she felt jabbing into her back, and then her mind began to work. There could be no root where there were no plants. The plainly wooden surface annoying her must be something else.
Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she turned to see her staff pinned between two rocks. Awkwardly, with her good hand, she pulled it out and laid it across her lap. She had no strength to call for its magic, but its mere presence comforted her nonetheless.
Another unnatural thing caught her eye, and she gasped with relief as she saw the ivory tube containing the Scrolls of Arcanus. The container lay below her feet, in a shadowy crack beneath an overhanging boulder. With relief, she confirmed that she had carried her talismans with her.
The accoutrements of faith brought hope back once again. Perhaps she would not die here. It would take more than a few bruises to break the will of a druid of the vale!
She closed her eyes and slowly, carefully, rehearsed the words to a simple spell. She was weak, and her mouth was wounded. She could not take a chance on misstating the incantation.