Chapter 4

I had never known desire could be replaced by frustration and anger so quickly as when that crackling, old voice interrupted us. I felt like a little boy being caught with a dirty hand deep down in the cookie jar, while Nightbreeze groaned loudly.

"As much as I am delighted to see young people in love and frolicking about in these beautiful surroundings, and as much as I believe that you, sir, will finish this far too early for your lovely friend to be much satisfied, I am still to old to wait for it. Welcome to the Forest of Calach. Now, which one of you wet, sandy, scruffy lovebunnies is a Wanderer?"

She was an ancient, ancient woman standing a little distance away amongst the pine trees. Wrinkled and bent like an old tree standing alone on a snowy plain. Her face and hands were horribly spotted green-black by some evil, disfiguring disease, and she was twitching and quivering slightly as if something inside her was trying to get out.

"She's bald," Nightbreeze whispered to me.

"She's old," I replied hurriedly.

"And bald."

"And old."

"Speak up, youngsters!" she almost yelled and shook her knobbly walking cane at us in what had to be an ironic manner.

"Yeah, well, I am, I guess."

"You guess?" she took a few steps forward. Fat, and dressed in a dark brown, coarse dress she looked as if she had just finished turning a prince into a frog and drug the princess to sleep for a hundred years or so. "Yes or no?"

"Yes, I am." I got a shudder as I felt nine years old again. Deep inside me my ancient resentment towards my teachers started to rise slowly and deliberately towards the surface.

"And who is this thing who is, I have to be honest, far too lovely for you to keep long to yourself?"

"I am Nightbreeze!" she replied. "And be polite now, you old hag!"

"Are you now, are you? So, it has begun already..." The old woman trailed off cryptically. "I am called Hawthorn, named for my sweet and soft tongue. I have been waiting for you, Wanderer, but I can't yet see it was worth it, even with the addition of this feisty, little harlot. While probably providing interesting diversions for you, I fail to see how her presence will be of service to me in any way."

"I would like you to know," I said, feeling more and more irritated, "that Nightbreeze has mighty powers over the winds!"

"Then she should eat less beans," the crone commented dryly. But there was a queer look in her face, and just as I was about to fling an insult back at her I realized that she has just goaded me into giving her information about my companion that I would not have given otherwise.

"My name is Sleetspray, and I am a Wanderer. State you business, or leave us to ours, whatever it may be."

"Come with me," the old woman said after laughing briefly, a sound like her throat was filled with dust.

"State your business."

"Come we with me. I live not far away, and I have a roof that will protect you against the night rain."

"We will seek a tree to hide under. State you business."

"Don't be an idiot, Wanderer. You will be soaking wet. Come, there is food."

"We will find food here in the forest. State your business."

"You prefer to starve? This pretty girl still makes you think with the dumb head between your legs? Get up and follow me!"

She waved her cane at us again, turned creakily around, and began huffing herself away from us. I felt my metaphorical jaw ache the way I set it, while Nightbreeze just smiled at my expression. After about twenty steps the crone halted, and turned around again. High above her, slowly growing brighter as the sun died, Chai the Blue Moon was moving slowly across the sky.

"Wanderer!" she called. "Fool! I have the answer to all your questions! I know why the Eternal Fire wants you dead, as they have tried five times already! Come!"

She knew? No-one knew all that, no even me. She knew about the attempt on my life only three days after my Awakening as Wanderer? About the flaming arrow that had narrowly missed me as I traveled with the caravan through the Titan's Cut? And the tree on fire falling on the river barge down Maexram? And reason for all of this, which I did not know myself? There was no reason not to get up and follow this crone, if she could tell us. No reason at all, except for my stubbornness.

"State your business," I repeated, feeling like an oaf.

The old woman seemed to go through some inner convulsion, shaking and twitching for many seconds before she finally calmed down. With an irate toss off of her bent shoulders she rammed her cane into the forest floor, and started to hump back towards us.

"So, it has begun," she muttered as she came closer. Nightbreeze was watching her keenly, almost amused.

"She is bald," she remarked under her breath.

"My business," the woman said then. "Is that I have been cursed. I am a sorceress. That is, I was a sorceress, until my enemies placed a doom on me. Amongst them are the worshippers of the Eternal Fire, and Umbrala, the bitch-queen of Moy. Now my powers are all gone, and I wear the face and body of an old, wicked crone. But in my mind I feel like a young woman, filled with all the power that I used possess a long time ago. I want the curse lifted, and I have wanted it for many a long, painful year. But I could not, not until now, not until the Wanderer came along."

"W-Why me?"

"Chosen of the Gods. Do you not have powers given to you by them?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"Then my business is this," she said with sour grin on her face like she was reluctantly volunteering to clean the lavatories or something equally disgusting. "I humbly ask your assistance in lifting my curse, Wanderer."

Then it happened, just as she spoke the words. Her back straightened somewhat, her twitching seemed to lessen a little, and her blue eyes became a little clearer. It was as if she aged backwards many years, from a creature almost close to death to a old, yet able, woman. But she did not seem happy about this strange turn of events, nor even much surprised. "By the Filth and the Fury!" she swore as it happened, and many stronger oaths she said besides, her voice stronger now.