Prologue

The border of the Locked Lands


“This is the closest he has come, Taiga,” the stolen child murmured against his companion’s leafy ear.

“Aye, and the longest he’s lingered,” the aging dryad agreed. He cupped a palm over his eyes, shielding them from the sun’s glare. “Move over Kale,” he grumbled, nudging the boy with his elbow. “I have no desire to sit in your shadow.”

Sunlight danced across the water. It warmed the backs of the two who squatted by the marsh, their eyes following a man who paced the opposite bank. The man was peering across the expanse of water, seemingly in their direction. In fact his searching gaze passed over his observers several times, but he seemed to stare straight through them, as though he did not see them at all.

Twice, as Taiga and Kale looked on, the man came down to the water’s edge and hovered there, one leg poised as if to step in. But both times, he backed away and instead took up his restless walking. A dense layer of fog crept in from the plains and drifted across the swamp, weaving through the tangle of rotting mangroves.
The man shivered, hugging scrawny arms close to his chest. He waded through the thick white mass, coming down to the brink of the swamp once more, gnawing all the while on his thumbnail. The man stared up at the long-needled brambles that had snaked their cords through the mangrove branches and strangled them. He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. Leaning forward, he skimmed one foot over the swamp’s oily surface. Brown sludge clung to his boot, globs of coagulated slime dripped from it. The man grimaced and shook it off. Then he crept further along the bank.

“Oh, for the sake of Feldar!,” Kale said, through gritted teeth. “He is so painfully slow, so uncertain. What does he see that we cannot?” Kale knelt down and briefly plunged his pale dreadlocks into the clear marsh water. He got up and shook out his dripping head, showering Taiga with droplets. “Why does he hesitate when he is so close, Taiga?”

Taiga eyed Kale with mild exasperation as he wiped the water from his face. “You know very well. His kin do not believe we exist,” he said in a crisp, matter-of-fact tone. “Hence, they cannot cross over to our side.”

“But it is absurd! To purge us and our magic from their memory, they themselves have conjured up barriers that are not real.” Kale shook his head with disgust. “And that is magic in itself.”

“Barriers we cannot see, but they are real enough,” Taiga corrected him. “Though you are right. It is magic, after a fashion. Powerful magic, for neither can we cross the marsh. Not until….” His voice trailed off as he thought better of finishing his sentence.

It was too late. Kale pounced on those two words. “Oh, Taiga!” His eyes widened “Do you really think, … could he be… the One?”

“Don’t speak foolishness.” Taiga clucked, his face hardening. He glanced around, as if he feared someone might be hiding in the reeds, listening. “There will be trouble enough if Xorse discovers that you are here, let alone that such talk has crossed our lips.”

“He could be the One who will be Tested.” Kale lifted his chin stubbornly. “He has persisted. This is his third attempt. He senses that there is something on our side.”

“Hush.” Taiga was no longer listening. “I hear something.” He tilted his head and listened, his eyes flickering. Then Taiga’s jaw went slack, his eyes seemed to grow flat and dull. “Surely not,” he muttered. “Not so soon! But I must make certain.”
He crossed to his willow and pressed an ear to its trunk. A rumble, faint but steady as a heartbeat, vibrated through the root system. A sound that drained the blood from Taiga’s brown face. He came quickly back to Kale, his face expressionless. “A pack of wild dogs,“ he said. “Listen to me. You must go to the caves and sound the alarm, so the children can be hidden in time.”

“But what about…?”

“I will stay here and watch. Go! Hurry boy!” Taiga turned his back on the boy, scanning the horizon for a glimpse of the jogging shapes that would soon cloud it. Without another word, Kale clambered up into Taiga’s willow. He crept out along a sturdy limb, where he crouched for a moment, poised on his flexed toes and fingertips. Suddenly Kale sprang out into space, his arms stretched out to grasp a branch in the next tree. And he was off, swinging easily through the branches towards the caves.

Taiga looked up as a flock of disturbed shwills burst from the trees like a shower of airborne blossoms. He watched them fly over the marsh and come to rest upon the boughs that fringed the opposite bank, where the man still faltered.

“You can do it. You can,” Taiga whispered, pleading for the man to hear. “Come to us.”

As though he had heard Taiga’s appeal, the man stepped abruptly into the swamp. He sank in to his knees. The movement disturbed pockets of sulphur from its depths; they surfaced and burst with gentle splutters around him.

“I can do it. I can. I can make it,” the man murmured. He looked up at the mangroves that hemmed him in, and saw that ravens thronged their branches. They stared down at him, their orange eyes unblinking. A cold worm of fear writhed deep in the man’s bowel. “Raaaghh,” he shouted, flapping his hands to shoo them. The birds scattered, but soon returned to settle on lower, closer branches.

“It will be alright. It will be alright,” the man chanted in a trembling voice; the very words Taiga‘s lips were forming. “There is an end to this. There is firm ground on the other side.” Focussing his gaze on the web of mangroves ahead, he began to wade through the swamp. A raven pounced. It lunged low and fast, and the man stumbled backwards. He fell heavily, his hands flailing. As he sat, gasping and slewing muck from his face, a slit-eyed head rose out of the water; a beady head whose wide mouth grinned at him curiously. The man struggled to get up, but two ravens swooped, beating him down. More eels emerged, turning their evil heads to watch the silent ferocity of the ravens. The man thrashed about blindly in the swamp, choking on its foul soup till it streamed from his nostrils. When he tried to stand, thorny brambles plucked at his clothes and tore his flesh. The eels smirked and moved closer.

Taiga saw the man struggling alone in the clear marsh water; and watched him finally crawl back onto the bank. As the man fled across the wetlands, screaming and beating himself about the head, the light in Taiga’s eyes faded, though he had hardly allowed himself to hope. He looked over his shoulder and glimpsed a swirl of dust in the distance; dust rising from the patter of stealthy paws. Then Taiga placed both palms on the willow and melted into his tree.
© 2006 by Shelly Taylor