The Foundling (The Hidden Realm) Read online

  Balbus smiled wryly to himself as he thought of what his friends and neighbors would say if they were suddenly to appear by his side. The forest, they would be quick to tell him, was a dangerous place. Didn’t he know or care that almost every year there was at least one woodcutter or hunter who ventured into it and never returned? If Balbus wanted honey then he should get it in safety by keeping bees on his own farm. They never spoke of it openly, but Balbus knew that most of them considered it just a matter of time before he, too, vanished, and his name was added to the long list of those who had been swallowed up by the forest that lay below their small farms.

  “What would they say if they knew I was searching for legends instead of honey?” wondered Balbus to himself, and he smiled again as he pictured the incredulous looks on their faces. “Truly, they would think that I have finally lost my mind.”

  Occupied as he was with his thoughts, Balbus lost track of the time. He searched the spaces between the trees with his sharp brown eyes, on the alert for anything unusual, until he suddenly realized that he and Carbo had reached the end of the long ridge on which he lived. Despite the pull of his staff, Balbus came to an abrupt stop. Before him, the land leveled out. Both ahead of him and to his right, the forest was much the same as that which covered the hillside behind him, fairly open and not too threatening. He had entered it before without coming to any harm. To his left, however, still out of sight for now, was a vast wilderness that stretched endlessly to the north and west. Called the Wild Wood by the Dwarves and the Abercius by the Hesperians, this expanse of ancient trees was a far more dangerous place than the open hillside forests Balbus was accustomed to. Most of it had never been explored by Men or Dwarves. Strange creatures lived there, seldom seen by human eyes and never listed in any bestiary. The worst of them, the venetor, was thought to have its dark den somewhere in those trackless forests. It was straight toward this dangerous place that Balbus’s enchanted staff now insistently pulled his right hand.

  “I think we should turn back Carbo,” Balbus said uneasily as he continued to resist the persistent pull of his walking stick. “We are only searching for honey, after all. It would be foolish to risk the dangers of the Abercius for something we can obtain at no risk from the hills behind us.”

  Carbo gave voice to a sharp bark to signal his agreement. He waited expectantly for Balbus to turn back toward the safety of the hillside forests. Balbus tugged against the staff, meaning to turn around, but it resisted his efforts to pull it away from its goal. Balbus could not recall that it had ever pulled at him so strongly before. “Surely the nest must be nearby,” thought Balbus to himself. “Perhaps I will go just a little farther then.”

  To Carbo’s dismay, instead of turning toward the safety of the slopes behind him, Balbus followed the firm pull of his staff and walked in a north westerly direction, straight toward the borders of the Abercius. Whining softly in distress, Carbo followed close behind him.

  Before long, a wall of immense trees rose up before Balbus, dwarfing the younger trees behind him. As his walking stick pulled him firmly toward the green gloom that lay under the ancient trees before him, Balbus hesitated, for he had never ventured into the Abercius, even in the daytime.

  “I will only go in a little ways,” he thought to himself finally. “If I do not find the bees’ nest quickly, I will turn around and go home.”

  He allowed his staff to pull him into the forest. Colossal green towers, those trees seemed to him as he walked beneath them. Their thick trunks, some of them twenty or more feet in diameter, were buttressed by enormous, winding roots that burrowed through the thick layer of old, fallen leaves that covered the ground like a brown carpet. Although the trees grew well apart from each other, the light that filtered down to the forest floor was dim and muted; for each tree joined its branches, high overhead, to those of its neighbors to form an unbroken roof of green leaves over the forest floor. Despite the lack of undergrowth, Balbus could not see very far in the dim light, and there were dark shadows at the limits of his vision.

  “Any sort of danger might be hiding in this gloomy place,” thought Balbus to himself. His steps slowed, but still he went on, following the insistent pull of his staff. Soon, the sheer size of the trees began to weigh on him. He felt insignificant, as if he were no more than a tiny insect toiling over and between their enormous roots. Thoughts of the Ondredon began to trouble him. According to the fireside tales Balbus had heard as a child, some of the great trees in the Abercius were more alive than the trees that lived in other places. They possessed the ability to move from place to place. It was perilous to approach them, for some had the power to cast spells, and they did not love men or their sharp axes.

  Although Balbus had never believed in the existence of the Ondredon before, here in this lonely and mysterious place, he began to feel he might have been mistaken in his disbelief. At the edges of his vision, it seemed to him that the trees around him began to bend and sway in his direction in a threatening manner, but when he stared at them directly, they stood as still as if they were made of stone.

  “I hate this gloomy place. Why haven’t I turned back already?” he wondered to himself. “I shall stop and turn around now,” he said firmly, but his staff continued to draw him deeper into the forest.

  “What a fool I am,” thought Balbus to himself, suddenly. “I can end this right now.” He formed a picture in his mind of his own snug home and waited expectantly for his staff to change direction. When the moments stretched out and the staff continued to draw him on into the forest, Balbus felt a moment of real fear.

  “This confounded staff has never behaved like this before. It must have been ensorcelled by the Ondredon,” thought Balbus to himself. He released the polished wood as if it had suddenly become hot to the touch, and the staff fell to the ground. Balbus breathed a sigh of relief to be free from its insistent pull. “I am turning back now, even if I have to leave the staff here,” he thought to himself. Raising his head, Balbus looked around at the endless vista of gray lichen covered tree trunks that surrounded him and suddenly realized that he had lost all sense of direction.

  Despite the coolness of the air, he began to sweat. The many stories he had heard about the Abercius, none of them good, ran through his mind. From the corners of his eyes, he thought he saw awful shapes moving in the shadows. A wave of panic washed over him, urging him to run and leave this frightening place behind. Fortunately, Balbus’s common sense reasserted itself. He had enough woodcraft to know that he could not just go running blindly through the forest. “I will end up going in circles and never find my way out,” he thought to himself. Reluctantly, he picked up his staff again, for without it, he might never find his way out of this terrible place.

  As Balbus’s fingers closed around his staff, it immediately began to pull against his hand, trying to draw him on again deeper into the forest. Reluctantly, Balbus followed it, trying to pick the easiest path through the network of huge roots covering the ground. Occasionally, he was forced to scramble over fallen branches, some of them as large as young trees.

  So intent was he on the ground in front of him that Balbus was taken by surprise when the staff brought him into an open space. There was a hole in the canopy above him, and Balbus was momentarily blinded by the shafts of bright sunlight that pierced the opening. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that the ground before him was heaved up, as if a great tree had been uprooted there. A sort of path, deeply rutted and furrowed, led away from the disturbed ground deeper into the gloom of the forest.

  “One of the Ondredon has been here,” thought Balbus to himself in a sudden panic. “What else could have torn up the ground in such a fashion?” He looked wildly about him, expecting at any moment to see some great tree reaching for him with its gnarled branches, and all the while, the staff continued to surge against his hand. As it pulled him across the clearing, Balbus started violently when a wolf howled mournfully in the distance. The long hairs on Carbo’s neck ros
e up stiff and straight.

  “It is just a wolf,” Balbus scolded himself nervously as he sought to slow his pounding heart. “Wolves are too well fed to bother with people during the summer months,” he reassured Carbo, but his voice was full of doubt. Who knew how the wolves in this terrible forest would act.

  Driven by a sudden determination to stop the foolishness of his master, Carbo closed his white teeth on Balbus’s right pant leg, tugging vigorously backwards as if imploring Balbus to stop his unwise advance into the forest.

  “Only a little farther old friend,” said Balbus to Carbo as he gently freed his leg. “We must follow the staff to wherever it is leading us. If I abandon it now, we will never find our way out of the forest.”

  Despite Balbus’s and Carbo’s misgivings, nothing threatened them as they traveled deeper into the wood, but an odd stillness grew in the air. No bird or any other creature broke the thick silence, and it seemed as if the whole forest was waiting expectantly for something to happen. Again, a wolf howled, the sound definitely much closer now. Balbus did not start this time, but he slowed his steps, for the distant, eager yelps, which followed the howl, indicated that the creature was on the trail of prey and approaching in his direction. As if it had taken on a life of its own and was dissatisfied with his slower pace, the walking stick pulled so vigorously at his fingers that it threatened to slip from his grasp.

  Convinced at last that he was being drawn into some sort of trap, Balbus decided that he would not take another step into the forest. Gripping his staff firmly with both hands, he dug in his heels, but the walking stick continued to drag him relentlessly forward past the furrowed bole of a great chestnut tree. Having taken him past the tree on its right side, the staff ceased to pull on his arms so abruptly that Balbus lost his balance and almost fell flat on his back. Luckily, his fall was stopped by the trunk of the chestnut as he stumbled backwards.

  Breathing heavily from the struggle he had just endured, Balbus leaned against the tree, holding the now quiescent staff in his right hand. In the sudden silence, he heard the droning of bees high in the branches above his head. His fears abruptly vanished, and he began to laugh softly in relief.

  “Fool,” he admonished himself. “It was only taking you to a bees’ nest after all. There must be a hollow limb somewhere on this chestnut tree at your back.” Still chuckling, he looked around him, at ease once more; but the laughter suddenly died on his lips. All thoughts of honey were driven from his mind by the sight of a small child standing in the space between two great oak trees only a score of feet away from him.

  A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

  For a long moment, Balbus remained motionless, staring in disbelief. A young child was the last thing he expected to see in this remote and lonely place. The boy, Balbus was sure it was a boy from his clothes and appearance, stared calmly back at him neither moving nor attempting to speak. There was a measuring look in his bright gray eyes as if he were trying to decide whether Balbus was a friend or an enemy.

  Balbus’s fears of the Ondredon, so recently laid to rest, returned full force. He began to wonder if the boy was real. Perhaps he was only an illusion, part of some cunning trick intended by the Ondredon to entrap him, for it seemed impossible to him that a real child of such a young age could be here alone in this wild place.

  Unexpectedly, Carbo walked up to the boy and solemnly licked his face with a wet tongue. The boy laughed, the sound of his high, clear voice dispelling Balbus’s fears and lifting his heart. Ducking his head, the boy laughed again as he pushed Carbo’s head away with both of his slender hands. “No spell could deceive Carbo’s nose,” Balbus reassured himself, shaking off his misgivings once more. “He must be real, although I cannot imagine how he got here.” Without moving any closer, Balbus carefully looked the boy over and guessed his age at five or six years. He had a shock of curly black hair and a face that, upon closer examination, made Balbus uneasy once more, for he could find no flaw in it. “Something is wrong here,” he thought to himself. “Surely no human child ever possessed such perfect features and such a flawless voice.” The boy’s clothes were unusual, too. His tunic and pants were made of a thin, finely woven gray fabric that was unfamiliar to Balbus. Although torn and stained, there was a richness about it which spoke of wealth. The supple, soft leather shoes on his small feet, worn almost through as if he had walked a great distance, looked fine enough to grace the feet of a young prince.

  “Who are you boy, and where in the Middle Realm did you come from?” Balbus asked at last in a mystified voice. The boy made no answer, but his bright gaze remained fixed on Balbus’s face. He was calmly scratching Carbo behind the ears with the long, slender fingers of his left hand, but he looked ready to flee at the slightest sign of danger.

  “Perhaps he is too frightened to talk,” thought Balbus to himself. He had little experience with children, for he had never married, and it put him at a disadvantage now. Slowly, he sank down on his heels so that his eyes and the boy’s eyes were almost on the same level. “Are you lost, boy?” he asked in a kindly tone, first in Hesperian and then in the common tongue.

  The boy still made no answer, but something in Balbus’s voice seemed to reassure him, for his strangely bright eyes lost some of their wary look. The faintest shimmer of light seemed to play about his face and form, but Balbus was not sure he could trust his eyes in that regard.

  “My name is Balbus,” he said pointing to himself. “Can you tell me your name at least?” he asked patiently.

  Softly, in a clear voice, the boy said, “Elerian.”

  “Is that your name?” asked Balbus, for the word was not one that was familiar to him. It was not Hesperian nor did it sound like any word of the common tongue or the language of the Dwarves, all of which Balbus spoke.

  The boy spoke again, a string of words this time that fell pleasantly on Balbus’s ears, but which made no sense to him. If they were part of a language, it was one Balbus had never heard before. Slowly, trying not to alarm the boy, Balbus rose to his feet, wondering what he should do next.

  “I should make some sort of search,” he said softly to himself. “Surely, someone must have brought this child here. Perhaps some hunter and his family have camped nearby, and he has wandered away from them,” he thought doubtfully, for although he was not yet ready to admit it, he suspected in the back of his mind that this was no ordinary child he had found.

  Balbus slowly walked toward the boy, as if approaching some small wild creature that might bolt at the first threatening move, then bent over and picked him up with his left arm. The boy did not resist. He seemed to have accepted Balbus as well as Carbo as a friend, for he immediately put a small, surprisingly strong arm around Balbus’s neck and rested quietly against his left shoulder. He was lighter than he appeared, seeming almost weightless in Balbus’s strong arm; and again, although he could not be completely certain, it seemed to Balbus that a faint shimmer played about his fine features like starlight on running water.

  For the first time, Balbus allowed himself to wonder if the boy was a human child at all. He thought back to the faun that he had seen in the forest years ago. There was no possibility that the boy belonged to the same race. “My first guess is the more likely one,” he thought to himself. “The boy must have wandered away from some hunter’s camp. The Ancharians sometimes venture into the Abercius in search of furs or game.”

  “What hunter’s child was ever dressed in such rich stuff?” argued the part of his mind which wished to believe that the boy was no ordinary child. “A year’s worth of furs would not pay for the fabric he is dressed in.”

  “Whoever he is, I must make a search,” said Balbus aloud, ending the debate with himself. “The answer to all my questions may lie nearby if I can only discover it.”

  Carbo and Elerian both gave Balbus a quizzical look, as if wondering whom he was talking to, and Balbus laughed softly at their puzzled expressions. Carrying his walking stick with his right hand and the boy on his l
eft arm, Balbus began to search the surrounding forest, but there was no one about, and there were no tracks; the drift of old leaves that covered the ground showed no signs of being disturbed.

  “How strange!” muttered Balbus to himself as he finally ended his fruitless search. “Surely the boy did not just drop down out of the sky.”

  Just then, a wolf yelped for the third time, and Carbo growled deep in his throat. Balbus noted nervously that the sound was closer than before. The beast definitely seemed to be moving in his direction. Was it a coincidence, or was the wolf hunting the boy? Balbus cast a quick glance at Elerian and saw that a wary, expectant look now filled his eyes. Beneath his thin tunic, Balbus could feel the tenseness in his wiry frame.

  “Even if this wolf is hunting the boy, Carbo and I can deal with it,” thought Balbus grimly to himself, and he checked to make sure that his long knife was loose in its sheath. Putting thoughts of the wolf out of his mind, he made a last effort to discover where the boy had come from. Bending over, he let Carbo sniff Elerian’s clothes before encouraging him to cast about for a scent. Nose to the ground, Carbo appeared to find and follow a scent trail for a short distance to the north but soon lost it near the base of a great oak tree.

  Balbus was mystified. It has not rained for days, and the boy’s scent trail should have been easy for Carbo to follow. He was not sure what to do next. Balbus considered shouting to see if there was anyone in hearing distance, but the anxiety in the boy’s eyes gave him pause.

  “If not the wolf, then something else frightened him,” he thought to himself. “Walking about the Abercius and shouting at the top of my lungs is not a good idea at any time I suppose,” he said to Elerian with a smile, but the boy paid no attention. His head was tilted to one side, and he appeared to be listening intently.